Saved from herself or, On the edge of doom
stubbornly faithful. He would not believe this spoiled child, who was
not even grateful to the girl who had nearly died to save her.
“You don’t believe me? Oh, Miles, what can I do?” Cristiane moaned. She
hid her angry, tearless eyes that he might think she cried.
“I wouldn’t believe an angel from heaven against Ismay!” he said
stoutly.
But he lied, and he knew it.
As for the note Cristiane implied Ismay had kept back, he never gave
it a thought. Cristiane and her feelings were nothing to him now. But
Ismay and that man from London were another story.
“Don’t dare to say she did not try to save you,” he said to drown his
thoughts. “I was there. I did not see your danger, no more did she.”
“And yet--you saved me,” she said quietly, and before he knew it she
had kissed his strong hand softly. He drew it away as if her lips had
stung.
“I saved you as I would have saved a drowning dog,” he said, his voice
ominously level. “Now you know. I care nothing for you. My love for you
was only play. I know it now.”
“Miles, don’t,” she gasped; “you kill me. But I can do you one service,
and I will. I--I love you now. I will take you to Ismay.”
“You can’t. She’s in bed.”
“She’s up in her sitting-room;” and he could not see the spite in her
face.
Marveling at her strange changes, Cylmer followed her, his heart
beating uncomfortably. But to see Ismay, to have in one word all
his doubts destroyed--for that he would have followed anywhere
unquestioning.
“Mrs. Trelane?” he said doubtingly, as they mounted the stairs.
“Is in the library. Besides, what matters?”--dully. “You have the
right. You mean to marry her.”
She opened Ismay’s door softly--too softly--and parted the curtains.
“Look,” she whispered in his ear, “there is the girl you love. Now, who
is right, you or I?”
Cylmer gave one glance; then, sick, staggered, broken, he turned away.
In a great chair Ismay sat; at her feet was Marcus Wray, holding her
hand, talking eagerly, very low. On the girl’s face was no sign of that
loathing she had professed, only a beseeching, doubtful look of dread
and hope.
“Come away,” whispered Cristiane, and he obeyed her, dazed and
stumbling.
Ismay, whom he would have sworn was true, whom he had loved as he had
never thought to love, Ismay was her mother’s child!
His face was hard as iron and as relentless as he stopped in the hall.
Cristiane shrank away from him like a child who fears a blow.
“Don’t look like that. I didn’t know,” she lied breathlessly. “But, you
see, I told the truth.”
“Curse the truth, and you,” he said between his teeth. “Get out of my
way.”
She could not hear what he said, but she turned away again, crying
pitifully.
“I couldn’t let you love her and not know. Don’t be so hard to me.”
With an effort that wrenched his very soul, the man mastered himself.
“All right, child. I know you meant to be straight. But run away to
bed. I can’t talk.”
Humiliated to the last drop of his blood, he stood in the hall alone,
opposite the half-opened door of the library.
Cristiane had spoken the truth again; Mrs. Trelane was there. And the
very spirit of evil and recklessness had prompted her to put on that
very white gown in which she had been photographed for Lord Abbotsford.
Ismay was not there to stop her; she had explained to Cristiane that
her black evening gown was torn; and now she stood, ignorant of any
stranger’s eyes, before the glass over the fireplace in the very
attitude of the photograph.
Her round, languorous throat; her arms, lovely still; the very turn of
her head, Miles Cylmer--saw--and remembered.
The mysterious woman of the photograph stood before him.
No wonder Ismay had been interested in Abbotsford’s death; no wonder
she had paled when he brought out that broken trinket. She had it
still, and probably she and her mother had laughed together at
the cleverness with which she had wiled it from him. He had been
fooled--fooled by a pair of green eyes, a mouth all love, a smile all
witching.
Mechanically, as a man in a dream, he put on his coat and hat and got
into his dog-cart that was waiting at the door. Cristiane was right.
Ismay Trelane was bad to the core.
But the man could not see the road for the bitterness of his heart as
he drove home through the dark.
Cristiane, in spite of her fright at his anger, smiled, well pleased,
as she went up-stairs to bed.
She had really seen Marcus Wray kiss Ismay; she had only kept back that
the girl’s subtle instinct, even in her sleep, had made her moan and
turn away from him, so that he crept away lest she should awake. She
was cunning enough not to tell Wray what she had seen, but the sudden
enlightenment had made her furious. Was this girl to come here and take
every man she saw? Were her own good looks, her fortune, as nothing
compared with the strange beauty of the other? Not while Cristiane le
Marchant could stop it.
Loved, caressed, guided in her every footstep by her dead father,
the girl was utterly spoiled. Without that firm and loving hand she
steered her own bark wildly, caring nothing for others, so that her own
vanity was satisfied. And Miles Cylmer that night had struck at the
self-conceit that was her most vulnerable part.
“He’s going to hate her now,” she thought, with gleeful conviction.
“Then he’ll come back to me, and I’ll refuse him again. Oh, how I will
refuse him! And I’ll keep Mr. Wray here and make Miles wild.”
She sank to sleep in a blissful reverie of Ismay driven out, Miles
sighing in vain, and she herself marrying a duke. She would wear white
satin and look very proud and cold. It would be delightful. And that
death had to-day only missed her by a hair’s breadth, and to-morrow
might strike again, she never thought. Nor that the girl she had
betrayed this very night was the only soul on earth who could save her.
CHAPTER XXVII.
TRUTH THAT LIED!
It was all so black, so terribly obvious as he looked at it.
Cylmer thought long that night, in a weary circle that led back to the
same horror. The original of that photograph had been Mrs. Trelane, and
if Abbotsford’s death lay at her door, Ismay had known it. That little
cry of hers came back to him.
“I never saw it before.”
A lie and a foolish one, that looking back was damning.
And Wray--she could deceive him for a brute like that?
And then there rushed over him the awful thought of the disgrace to
come; the wheels that he had set in motion that were even now out of
his power to stop. Even in his disenchantment, with that raging pain
at his heart that she was false who seemed so true, he was glad that
that one clue, that one fatal bit of evidence, the blue-green beetle,
was in her hands. The detectives would never see it again; Mrs. Trelane
warned in time, would destroy it and the bracelet he was certain it had
belonged to--and Ismay.
“Ismay can be consoled by Mark.” Yet at the thought his forehead was
wet. He would have given his soul not to have seen her to-night, to
have gone on believing in her; as he would never believe in any one
again.
And yet it had all been so simple; if fate had not played into the
spiteful hands of Cristiane le Marchant, would have been another link
to bind him to the girl who for his sake was fighting with the world
against her.
At eight o’clock Ismay had waked from a long sleep; waked weary and
languid in body, but with her brain more quick and clear than it had
been for two days. She was alone, and she lay for a little, thinking,
remembering.
What had made her so drowsy, so strange all that day? Had Wray, to keep
her out of the way, given her anything?
“There was only breakfast, he couldn’t!” she reflected. “We all had
the same, even my coffee Thomas poured out at the sideboard. Besides,
he doesn’t suspect me at all, thanks to Thomas’ version of my midnight
promenades.” She smiled to herself.
Had not Thomas met her face to face one night, and had not Jessie
told her in deepest secrecy of how the lady had walked, with the
very blood-stain that was the mark of her crimes on her breast! That
blood-stain she had made in sewing her ghost’s gown, with fingers that
were torn by Cylmer’s roses.
“Jessie.” Conviction flashed over her at the woman’s name.
Jessie had put her early tea down outside the door this morning. Ismay
was sleepy and too lazy to get up and let the woman in.
“I said to leave it, and I heard her go away,” she thought. “When I
took it in it was cold, and I thought it wasn’t nice, but I drank it.
He had plenty of time to put anything in it. If he passed and saw it
there he would not hesitate one second. Even if he did not suspect me
he may have been determined I should have to stay at home. One more
score against him.”
Her anger lent her strength. She got out of bed and clothed herself
in a warm dressing-gown, utterly heedless of the doctor’s orders.
Something that was not herself made her think of the scarab and Marcus
Wray. Could she have in her very hands the destruction of her enemy,
and not know it?
She took it out of its hiding-place, and saw the flash of Cylmer’s
ring, where it lay beside it.
When Marcus Wray was routed, she could put it on--she turned away that
she might not see it, but the sight of it had deepened her hatred of
the man who stood between her and happiness, whom, for her mother’s
sake, she dared not defy.
A step outside startled her. She had just time to throw the scarab into
the drawer and lock it, when her mother was in the room.
Her mother in white, in that very gown she should have burned, long ago!
“Why are you up? You’ll kill yourself!” Mrs. Trelane said sharply.
“I’m all right. I couldn’t stay in bed. Mother, in Heaven’s name, why
have you got on that?” she pointed like an accusing judge at the tawdry
white dress.
“Because I was sick of looking like a fright in black. It shows out
every line in my face. And there’s no one here but Marcus.”
“Who is your worst enemy,” helplessly. “And it isn’t decent, with Sir
Gaspard not dead a month.”
“Oh, bother! I told Cristiane my black one was torn,” lightly. “But
Ismay, are you really quite well? I was terrified about you this
morning!”
“Terrified!” Ismay threw back her head with her old laugh of mockery.
She knew quite well the depth of that terror. A horrible sight, the awe
of death that lies in all of us; but if death had been there her mother
would have dried her tears as useless, aging things; forgotten her
daughter as soon as the earth had closed over her.
“If you are going to be so brutal I shall go away,” Mrs. Trelane said
angrily. “If you have no feelings you might give me credit for some.”
“Don’t go.” Ismay caught her dress. “Come into the sitting-room. Tell
me about this morning--what happened, who carried me home?”
“Mr. Cylmer. Tell me, Ismay,” with quiet curiosity, “how well do you
know him? He looked like death when he carried you. And how did he
happen to be there?”
“He just, happened, I suppose,” provokingly.
“And I don’t suppose I was an engaging sight. What did Cristiane do?”
“Had hysterics, I think. I wasn’t listening. I thought you were dead;
so did Marcus.”
“You didn’t let him touch me?
“He went straight off for the doctor. It was that man Cylmer who got
you out of the water.”
“That man Cylmer!” The girl flushed with pride and joy. How she would
thank him when she saw him, with the strong arm that had saved her
close about her shoulders.
“Marcus wants to see you. That’s why I came up,” Mrs. Trelane remarked.
“Do be civil to him, Ismay, he tried to help you.”
“Me? yes?” enigmatically, and her mother shivered with a suspicion of
the girl’s knowledge, that died on the instant at her placid face.
“See me?” Ismay amended. “Very well, send him up. No, don’t stay! I’ll