Chapter XIII

In spite of Wallace Armstrong's entreaties, Laline could not alter her arrangement not to make the acquaintance of Alexander Wallace; for when Mrs. Vandeleur fixed upon the following Wednesday as the afternoon on which she would call at the bank, the young secretary had already announced to her employer her wish to remain at home.

"You are very right," the little lady had observed, "to avoid Mr. Armstrong if his society is uncongenial to you. Those strong instincts of liking and of hating are given to us women as safeguards. Although to my mind Mr. Armstrong is wholly sympathetic, if a secret voice tells you to beware of him, it is that of some beneficent spirit of the so-called dead, who see with fleshless eyes through the fleshly veil into the soul, and know that this man's society would be in some way harmful to you."

Laline was growing accustomed by this time to Mrs. Vandeleur's singular methods of expression. A strong liking had grown up between them, although the elder woman was hardly sufficiently human in her ways of thought to constitute a true friend. But Laline dared not confide in her, for many reasons, so she let her statements pass without comment. So far from cherishing any sentiment of repulsion against Wallace Armstrong, she could hardly keep her thoughts from dwelling on the subject of his tender speeches and tenderer eyes; and it was only by constantly reminding herself of the mean and cowardly trick by which he had become her husband that she was enabled to preserve any lingering resentment against him.

On the Tuesday evening before Mrs. Vandeleur's promised visit to Mr. Wallace's house Laline received the first approach to a love letter she had ever had despatched to her. Dinner was over, and she was engaged in writing in the study at Mrs. Vandeleur's dictation, when the postman's knock preluded the tap at the door of Susan and her entrance with a salver, upon which were two letters, one for the mistress of the house, and the other for Miss Lina Grahame.

"A letter for you, my child," said the elder lady, peering at the address through her eye-glass--"the first you have received since your arrival."

Long before Laline had opened it or even glanced at the handwriting on the envelope, she knew that Wallace Armstrong was her correspondent, and felt herself blushing to the roots of her hair under Mrs. Vandeleur's critical scrutiny.

"Do you know the writing?" the latter asked; and Laline replied with perfect truth that she had never seen it before.

"My dear Miss Grahame," the letter began--"I am writing to entreat
you to come with Mrs. Vandeleur to-morrow. Even if you don't like
me you would most certainly like my uncle, who is one of the
noblest and best of men, generous and forgiving to a fault, and
one who, in spite of his wealth, has suffered many deep and bitter
trials in what to him has been far more important than money, his
domestic affection. He is very old and very lonely, though with his
chivalrous kindness towards all women he is the very man who should
by rights be surrounded by a happy family circle. I owe everything
to him, and can hardly with a lifelong devotion repay his more than
fatherly goodness. I am sure that you are gentle and pitiful as you
are beautiful--'fair, kind, and true,' as Shakspere puts it. And,
being all these things, won't you come, Miss Grahame, and, by giving
yourself just a little trouble, and putting up for an hour or more
with the presence of some one you hate, confer a great pleasure upon
one of the best old men alive? I solemnly promise not to 'flirt,'
as you call it. If I may not talk to you, I will console myself by
talking of you to Mrs. Vandeleur, which is the next best thing.
In my dream last night you promised to come. Be as sweet as your
dream-prototype is the prayer of yours always devotedly,

"Wallace L. Armstrong."

This letter moved and interested Laline deeply. Since it was now impossible for her to accompany Mrs. Vandeleur and her niece, she felt that she must send a few words in answer, lest she might be thought too unfeeling. She was also very anxious to prevent Wallace from carrying out his threat of talking about her to Mrs. Vandeleur. The latter had guessed already that she was a married woman; and might she not be capable of hinting as much to Mr. Armstrong under the mistaken impression that his attentions would be disagreeable to her secretary?

Lost in thought, Laline bent over the letter which lay on her lap, ignoring the steady, curious gaze of Mrs. Vandeleur's keen, dark eyes. The fact that it was absolutely the first letter she had ever received from her husband excited her strangely, and she found herself fingering the paper with a touch that was almost affectionate. It seemed a little in the light of a confession that Wallace should expatiate so much upon his uncle's generous and forgiving nature and fatherly goodness, and on his lonely life and domestic troubles.

"I believe--I want to believe that Wallace has utterly changed," she said to herself, with flushed cheeks and moist eyes. "If he were anything like the man he was four years and a half ago, when he entered into that horrible bargain with my father, he could never have written this letter. His uncle's goodness must have changed him by gradually softening his heart. And then--my father was so much older that he may have led him into things, and Wallace was penniless--perhaps I have been too hard in my judgment on him all these years, although I am afraid if it were all to happen again I should act in just the same way."

"Have you any letters to write, dear child?" Mrs. Vandeleur's silvery tones broke in. "I shall be sending Susan to the post with mine within the next half-hour."

"There is just one I want to write, if you please," the secretary answered.

And Mrs. Vandeleur obligingly made room for her at the other end of her writing-table.

Laline took a pen between her fingers; but the letter was not so easily written. There was very much she wished to tell Wallace Armstrong, and very much again that she did not want him to know. She wanted to tell him that she would willingly come to see his uncle, since he so much desired it, but that, having once refused, she did not see her way to changing her mind without exciting comment. She would also have liked him to know that she by no means hated him, that she might even in time be induced to like him very much, but that if he wished to please her he must refrain from talking about her to Mrs. Vandeleur.

But she had no idea how to word her letter, and, even before writing it, she began to rack her brains in the vain endeavour to remember whether her husband possessed or had ever seen any of her handwriting.

Finally, having wasted more than ten minutes, she seized her pen and began the heading, "Dear Mr. Armstrong," hoping that other words would come.

A little laugh, like that of a mischievous fairy, made her start and drop the pen.

"'Dear Mr. Armstrong,' and nothing more?" Mrs. Vandeleur asked, mockingly. "That is not a very fluent love-letter for the poor young gentleman, is it?"

Laline looked at once astonished and confused. But Mrs. Vandeleur's prescience in this case was easily explained. She had recognised the writing on the envelope of Wallace's letter, and had watched Laline's fingers tracing three words, which she guessed to be those she quoted.

"You seem in a difficulty over your letter," the little lady suggested, in an insinuating tone. "Can I not help you in any way? I have some judgment, and my advice may be of value to you. What is it you want to say to Mr. Armstrong?"

Laline arose, agitated and nervous, and, tearing her letter across, dropped it in the fire.

"It isn't a bit necessary to send it at all," she said; "and that is what made it difficult to write. I met Mr. Armstrong in Kensington Gardens while you were out last Saturday afternoon, and I told him I did not wish to accompany you and Miss Gavan to tea at Mr. Alexander Wallace's. But he took it into his head to want me to go, and wrote to especially ask me. I wanted to write and say I couldn't change my mind--that is all."

"You mean that is all you are going to tell me?"

"I mean that is all that happened."

"Does Clare know?"

"Clare? Oh, no! Why should she?"

Mrs. Vandeleur shook her head.

"You know what I read in the cards about you yesterday," she said, mysteriously. "You must beware of the evil done by a red-haired woman and a black-haired man. Lina, tell me--is Wallace Armstrong in love with you?"

"How can he be when he has seen so little of me?" she asked, parrying the question, and partly vexed, partly glad to talk upon the subject.

Mrs. Vandeleur studied the girl's face through her eye-glasses. There was something about it which she did not understand and which she mistrusted. It was not yet the tremulous softness of love she read in the girl's lowered eyes and lips curved into a half-smile; but there was about her a look suggesting that she was secretly happy and amused over some knowledge she did not mean to share with others.

"You cannot love him, Lina," Mrs. Vandeleur reminded her, softly. "You are not free."

"No," Laline repeated--and her half-smile deepened--"I am not free. And now we won't talk about him, will we, dear Mrs. Vandeleur? And I sha'n't write the letter; I shall just stop away."

"Do you wish to go?"

Laline's lips were framing "No," when she stopped.

"I hardly know," she said, after a pause. "But I think I should like to go."

"I shall be strangely disappointed in you, Lina," said Mrs. Vandeleur, coldly, "if you encourage Mr. Armstrong to love you solely for vanity's sake."

The girl knelt down at Mrs. Vandeleur's feet and gazed earnestly up into her face.

"Trust me, dear Mrs. Vandeleur," she said, "for I shall never do that! But--but I heard a good deal about Mr. Armstrong before I came to your house at all, and there is much more about him that I want to find out."

"Does he know that you had any previous acquaintance with him?"

"He has no idea of it."

"He doesn't recognise you? That's strange! Was he at all in love with you before?"

"Oh, no!" the girl answered, with a very sad little smile. "If he had been----"

She did not finish her speech. In her own mind she was saying that, if Wallace Armstrong had indeed loved her at Boulogne, she would have been living by his side as his wife all these years in that very house to which she was hidden as a guest on the following day.

"Does Wallace Armstrong know your husband?" Mrs. Vandeleur asked, suddenly.

The blood swept over Laline's face as she answered,--

"Yes."

"And you want to find out about him?" pursued Mrs. Vandeleur. "Surely, if you detest and dread him so much, it would be wiser to restrain your curiosity."

"I want also to learn, if I can, whether my father is alive."

Mrs. Vandeleur threw up her little hands and sighed.

"Like all women," she murmured--"hankering after chains and slavery after being once freed from them. Our work together should absorb you, to the exclusion of such thoughts. But you shall go with me to-morrow, if you like. I knew that Wallace Armstrong's spirit was too fine to assimilate with that of Clare. Her destiny will lead her, late in life, to the arms of some stout and bald-headed stock-broker. When he is asleep, after dinner, she will flirt with his clerks or his partner, and be very happy; but you--life holds something very different in store for you. I suppose you must dree your weird. But remember, once you let love come into your life, trouble--terrible trouble--will come too!"

Secretly, Mrs. Vandeleur was very curious to see Laline and Wallace together. She interested herself readily in other people's affairs when these latter attracted her in any way--she liked to constitute herself a sort of _deus ex machina_ in the lives of her friends, to pull the strings which moved their destinies; and the fact that both Laline and Wallace, whom she sincerely admired, declined to confide in her wholly, piqued her curiosity the more.

Against her niece Clare, on the other hand, Mrs. Vandeleur entertained a sentiment which was almost dislike; and she was annoyed to notice, on the following afternoon, when the two girls came down into the hall, ready dressed for their drive, that Clare, in a picturesque costume of red-brown cloth and beaver fur, appeared far more strikingly handsome at first sight than Laline, in the quietest of blue serge gowns and small black felt hat.

"Why have you those horrid, plain, masculine clothes on?" she inquired crossly of her secretary.

"They are my only walking things," Laline replied. "You know, dear Mrs. Vandeleur, I can't pay an afternoon call in those trailing white garments I wear in your room."

"Dear Lina would look like a ghost dropping into afternoon tea!" purred Clare, happy under the becoming framework of a red-brown velvet 'picture' hat and feathers. "I think she looks so sweet and neat in that dear little black felt hat and black cloth jacket!"

Mrs. Vandeleur snapped her glasses to and shut her mouth very hard. Then she ordered the girls into the brougham, and gave the coachman some order which they did not hear, but in consequence of which he drew up before a particularly smart millinery establishment on the way to the Strand.

Here Mrs. Vandeleur insisted that Laline should get out with her while Clare remained in the carriage, to which the little lady presently returned in triumph by the side of her secretary, in whose appearance a transformation had taken place by the substitution of a costly black velvet "picture" hat and graceful black velvet cape, trimmed with fur and lined with wine-coloured silk, for her former dowdy garments.

A flash of genuine anger passed into Clare's green eyes; but she was far too much afraid of her aunt to enter a protest, and declared, with apparent enthusiasm, that "dear Lina looked perfectly lovely; but then she looked that before!"

Wallace's Bank was a vast gloomy-looking building, of which a considerable frontage faced the Strand. It was built in a square, with a paved courtyard in the middle, which led from one portion of the Bank to the other. Alexander Wallace possessed many commodious houses in different parts of London, and notably a charming family mansion and estate at Hampstead. But he hated change and he hated moving a little more every year. His father and his grandfather had lived over the Bank, and what was good enough for them was good enough for him. His tastes were very simple, and in his personal expenses he was economical almost to miserliness; but his kindness of heart and generosity in cases of real distress were well known.

A sedate elderly man-servant opened the big doors which led into the private portion of the house, and the visitors found themselves in a small but very lofty hall, papered in old-fashioned unæsthetic drab, in which a fire was burning. Would the ladies mind coming up-stairs? the man asked, and proceeded to lead the way up several short flights of winding stairs and through a labyrinth of passages to a door, before which he paused.

"These are Mr. Armstrong's rooms," he explained, and forthwith showed the ladies into a good-sized apartment, distinguished by an appearance of extreme cosiness and bachelor comfort. The cheeriest of fires burned within the wide hearth, the furniture was of the saddle-bag order, roomy, and easy-giving, plush curtains drawn over the windows kept out all glimpse of the snowy night, and a multitude of clever water-colour sketches, chiefly of picturesque foreign scenery and of pretty girls, covered all the available wall space.

On a round table, set unfashionably in the centre of the room, a tempting array of cakes and sweets awaited the visitors; and the two occupants of the room--Wallace Armstrong and his uncle Alexander Wallace--rose at the visitors' entrance and advanced to greet them.

Laline's heart beat fast as she was formally introduced to the man who had long ago by letter welcomed her so warmly as a daughter. She felt she hardly dared to look up into his face lest he should read her secret in her eyes; but when she did at last summon up sufficient courage to do so, she was struck by the extreme benevolence of the old Scotchman's regard. Light gray eyes, at once keen and kind, looked out from his pale and deeply-furrowed face, which possessed but little of his nephew's beauty of outline. In spite of his great wealth, the banker's manner towards the three ladies was constrained and even shy, but full of a gentleness and consideration which won the heart of Laline.

"How kind a father he might have been to me all these years!" she thought.