Chapter XXIV

The colour fled from Laline's face as she found herself in the full daylight face to face with the man whom of all the world she least wished to meet.

Wallace on his part was deeply moved by her beauty, by the grace and refinement that distinguished her, and stirred to wonder where he had met the direct gaze of those wistful hazel eyes before. A sleepless night, together with the emotions she had recently experienced, rendered Laline unusually pale; but her pallor and extreme slightness only served to emphasise the spirituality and fragility of her appearance; and, standing there before him in her broad-brimmed black-velvet hat and rich furs, she looked like one of Gainsborough's dainty great ladies come to life in modern costume.

But the daylight, which revealed no flaw in the girl's clear skin and delicate features, touched the man less becomingly. Hard living had furrowed his face and prematurely silvered his hair and the light in his eyes was fitful and sunken. He looked what he was--the wreck of a man gifted by nature with exceptional strength and beauty, one who should have been a king among men, but who had let himself drift downward to the dregs of society.

He would have held out his hand, but her cold glance and still colder bow restrained him. An angry flush passed over his face as he noted them.

"Oh, I remember!" he said, trying to speak with defiant carelessness. "We insulted each other at our last merry meeting, didn't we, Miss Graham? But won't you let by-gones be by-gones?"

"I expected to meet Mr. Wallace and his nephew," she said icily, turning away that he might no longer study her face. She was trembling with excitement and nervousness and almost sick with fear lest he should recognise her. But her secret alarm was only indicated by an unsympathetic staccato of utterance.

"My cousin was telegraphed for to the City this morning, and cannot be here for at least half an hour. As to my uncle, he is at present in his rooms, and I have given particular instructions that he is not to know that you are here."

She turned upon him, white with indignant surprise.

"Do I understand you to say that you have given such an order?" she inquired.

"Yes."

"May I ask, Mr. Armstrong, your reason for taking so extraordinary a step?"

"I wanted to talk to you."

Laline's heart sank within her. Surely he could not have recognised her?

"I have not the slightest wish for any conversation with you, Mr. Armstrong!" she said, in a voice which it needed all her self-control to render firm. "May I ask you to ring the bell, that the servant may inform Mr. Alexander Wallace that I am here?"

"Wait a minute! I want to go back to something you said the last time I saw you!"

"There is no need, and I must decline to discuss the subject. If you do not ring the bell, Mr. Armstrong, I shall!"

She moved quickly towards the fireplace. She was horribly afraid of being left alone with him. Something in his coarse and masterful personality affected her with a sense of mingled fear and repulsion, and it seemed difficult for her to breathe the same air with him.

"I want," he repeated, doggedly, coming between her and the fireplace, "to speak to you about what you said when I last saw you."

"Pardon me," she exclaimed, flashing a look of deep scorn upon him, "that was not the last time I saw you! Much later, between ten and eleven at night, I was passing along the High Street, Kensington, and I saw you again!"

She lowered her voice on the last words, and a deep blush of shame for him passed over her face. Wallace saw the colour, and recognised the sentiment that called it there. Something like a flush crossed his face too.

"So you were with Lorin," he said. "I thought as much! All the more reason why I should speak to you. Miss Grahame, it was you who drove me to drink last night--you and no one else!"

For almost the first time in her life Laline smiled satirically. Clearly she did not believe him.

"It is true, all the same," he said, answering her look. "When Lorin got me out of that hole last night--and I admit he's had to do the same thing before--he took me home to my diggings; and presently, when I had had a cooling draught and put my head under the tap, it came out in a little talk that I had called on that table-rapping little woman yesterday afternoon in order to have a look at you. Then, for once in his life, my immaculate cousin lost his temper. I have hardly ever seen him so angry. It appears that he had been trying hard to keep me dark. Such men as I, he had the impudence to tell me, were not fit to cross the paths of such women as you, and it was sacrilege for me even to mention your name. 'Now I know why she wanted to break off her engagement with me!' he cried out. 'She could not bear the thought of being even distantly connected with you!' It was the first time that Lorin had ever rounded on me like that, and I could have killed him but for the fact that he had just bruised his arm a bit getting me out of a scrape."

"Bruised his arm! Oh, is he much hurt?" Laline cried, anxiously.

An ugly smile crossed Wallace's face.

"A bruise on his arm is of more importance to you than my whole existence--isn't it?" he asked, bitterly.

Laline's spirit was roused.

"Certainly it is, Mr. Armstrong," she retorted; "and I should never forgive myself if, after I had sent your cousin to rescue you in a disreputable scuffle, he had been hurt while protecting you."

"Don't distress yourself. A little arnica, together with your sympathy, will soon cure him!" he sneered. "What I want to speak about is this. When you met me yesterday you told me my cousin had never mentioned my name to you; he confirmed your statement, and he is one of those George Washington sort of prodigies who scorn to tell a lie. I was sober enough yesterday afternoon in all conscience; and yet, from what he said, you at once hated me so much that you wanted to break with him on my account. Is that true?"

The colour came and went in Laline's face, and her heart beat fast. It was indeed only too true that on his account she must part from Lorin--but true in a far deeper and distant sense than Wallace knew or could guess.

"I cannot discuss my private affairs with you," she said in a very low voice, and without looking him in the face.

"But if you have any sense of justice," he returned, quickly, "you will tell me what reason you had for the scorn and hatred--for it was nothing short of that--you showed from the moment that you found out it was not my cousin but I to whose arms you had rushed. Those few seconds, while you clung to me before you found out your mistake, were among the sweetest in my life."

"Mr. Armstrong," she said, growing hot with anger, "if you are only detaining me here to insult me, your conduct is even worse than I expected from you."

"Is it an insult," he asked, "to tell you that a spontaneous caress from a woman as good as she is beautiful made me feel another man? Is it an insult to tell you that, during those few seconds, while you rested your head on my shoulder and I felt the touch of your hands about my neck, I would have given the rest of my life to have been for a few moments only the man you loved?"

"It is impossible!" she cried, in great agitation. "You had not even seen my face!"

"Just a fleeting glimpse in the twilight of beautiful appealing eyes and beautiful arms outstretched towards me. But it was the love in your touch, Miss Grahame, and the love in your voice which moved me. No woman has ever loved me like that. The women I have known have been fools, or worse. But as you nestled in my arms for those few seconds and I smoothed your hair, I understand what a woman like you might make of a man like me."

Instinctively he moved one step towards her, and as instinctively Laline put up her hand, as though to ward him off, and drew a step farther away from him. He saw the action and frowned impatiently.

"Why should you hate me as you do?" he asked, in tones of passionate anger. "Can you not love my cousin without hating me? I tell you it was the thought of your scornful eyes and your scornful voice that drove me to drink yesterday. I had been half inclined to swear off and reform and be reconciled to my uncle, and all that; but your disdain seemed to choke me. I couldn't go home and think about it, so I tried to drown the memory of you and your words too. Now be frank with me, Miss Grahame. What could have made you hate me even before we had ever met, unless it was Lorin's account of me?"

"I had heard about you from others," she answered, in a confused tone, averting her face from him. "I--I have a horror of people who drink. I had seen things about you in the papers----"

"Oh, I don't pretend to be a saint!" he broke in. "My life is my own--it's of no value to any one but myself; and what I do with it is no one's concern but my own. My flawless cousin is perpetually playing guardian angel to me. It is a part he enjoys, and he ought to be grateful to me for providing employment for him in that capacity."

"It is your paltry sneers about your cousin that make me dislike you, Mr. Armstrong!" Laline flashed out at last. "I am not one of the women who care for dissipated heroes or who believe in the love of reformed rakes; and I see nothing to sneer at in the unselfish goodness of an honourable man towards an ungrateful relative. The sneers and sarcasm, to my mind, should be for the man who deliberately indulges in degrading vices and then poses as unloved and misunderstood because well-conducted people have no wish to know him."

Just for one second a look of furious anger shot from Wallace's eyes. Then he turned humble again.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for seeming to disparage my cousin. But why should he have everything and I nothing? Is it not enough to be accepted as my uncle's heir--to be rich, successful, and popular, and a partner in one of the finest businesses in London--but he must also have the love of one of the best and purest and most beautiful of women? Why should he have everything and I nothing? In this very house, every corner of which I knew as a boy, I have had for weeks and months past to slink about like a hunted thief, flying from the man who should by rights stand to me in the place of a father. I have been allowed here on sufferance by my cousin and the butler, who take it upon them to lock up everything but tea and soda-water while I am about, and who watch me as though I were a dangerous wild beast. Do you think such treatment tends to sweeten a man's disposition or to make him think better of his fellow-creatures?"

"You did not look, when I entered, as though you were here on sufferance, or as if you greatly feared being found here by Mr. Wallace," Laline remarked, coldly.

"No; but for this immunity I have had to do penance with bell and candle. I was only taken back into favour this morning at Lorin's intervention, and have had to promise and vow unheard-of things in the way of reformation before my uncle would condescend to shake hands with me."

"And it was Lorin who brought the reconciliation about?"

"Oh, Lorin--always Lorin to the fore in good works!" he sneered. "I think in this case it was as a set-off in the ledger of his conscience against having gone for me and called me bad names last night."

"Is it possible you feel no gratitude towards him?"

"No," he answered, roughly; "I don't understand gratitude! Love and hate I know, and scorn, and even now and then, in weak moments, something like regret. But that last is waste of time; and as to gratitude--why should one be grateful? No man does more for another than he feels inclined to. Some people enjoy giving up things and being unselfish and denying themselves and so on. I don't. I have never yet met the man or woman who, in my opinion, was worth the slightest sacrifice from me, and I don't suppose I ever shall. Don't turn from me in such disgust, Miss Grahame. Most people think as I do, but fear of others make them hold their tongue about it and pose as being fond of doing good and all that sort of humbug. Now I am not like that."

"No," she returned; "I see you are not. You like to boast of your evil qualities as though you were proud of them; and you think it a fine thing to utter bitter and uncalled-for jests at the expense of others, under the pretence of loving truth."

"Miss Grahame," he said, suddenly seizing her gloved hands and turning her face to the light, "what makes you hate me as you do? It sounds in your voice, which vibrates with dislike; you shrink back from my touch as though I were a viper; you can't even look me in the face; and your scorn breaks out in every word you utter. What possible harm have I ever done you that you should hate me as you do?"

His fierce pressure of her hands hurt her, and the very touch of his fingers had the effect of making her tingle from head to foot with aversion. A desire, which was almost hysterical in its intensity, came upon Laline to answer him back the truth, and cry,--

"I hate you because you are my husband, because you won me by a cruel and heartless trick, because I understand your nature and my own revolts against it, and because you stand between me and the man I love with all my heart and soul!"

"Why won't you look at me?" he was asking. "Is my appearance so loathsome that you daren't even do that? Look in my eyes, and you will read there whether, if I had Lorin's chance, I could not love you a thousand times better than he is capable of doing. Love! He doesn't know what it means. How can a man with beautiful manners and beautiful clothes, a man who paints pretty pictures and plays tennis with pretty girls, a man of flawless character with his pockets full of money and his future nicely garden-rolled before him, know of the passion that burns in the veins of a friendless scamp such as I? Your good men who go to church on Sunday and stick to their desks so many hours on weekdays don't know the meaning of the word passion. Lorin has everything in life--why should he want you too? Good women like you are sent into the world to redeem bad men like me, not to carve beef and mutton for such estimable citizens as my cousin Lorin. A good woman whom I loved and who loved me might do what she liked with me; and, Lina, from the moment when yesterday you ran into my arms, I have loved you and longed to hold you there again!"

"You must be mad!" she exclaimed, struggling to free her hands from his grasp. "If you were in your right senses you would not dare to speak to me like this! I have only once before seen you--I have no feeling for you but contempt and dislike--and yet you talk to me of love! Let my hands go this instant, and never presume to so insult me again!"

She was looking him full in the face this time, with mingled terror and aversion shining in her soft, dark eyes. As he met their gaze, Wallace Armstrong suddenly dropped his hands and fell back a step with a muttered expletive--

"What a likeness!" he ejaculated, and continued staring fixedly at Laline.

In terror lest he should have recognised her, the girl turned abruptly from him and hurried towards the door. Before she could reach it he had arrested her steps by laying his hand on her arm.

"I beg your pardon," he stammered, "but just for one moment you looked so strangely like some one I once knew--my wife, in fact--a worthless hussy, who deserted me on our wedding-day. I meant to treat her well, for I liked her, and she might have made something of me if she had tried; but she was a true daughter of her father, and bad to the core. For just an instant, though, you looked so like her that it was quite startling."

During this speech Laline had had full time to recover her self-possession.

"Thank you," she said, with glacial politeness. "From your description it is hardly flattering to be likened to such a person. Your uncle and your cousin must have been misinformed. They told me that your wife was an orphan when you first met her, and that she died, deeply regretted, of typhoid fever about a month after your marriage."

He gazed at her curiously, still with his hand on her arm.

"So that is the story you heard--eh?" he remarked. "I said my wife bolted from me on her wedding-day; but I never said I didn't get her back, did I? As to the 'deeply-regretted'--well, we are all deeply-regretted on our tombstones, aren't we? No--don't shake my hand off; if we are to be cousins by marriage, mayn't I even touch your sleeve?"

And at that identical moment, as they stood close together facing each other, Wallace with his hand on Laline's arm and both clearly agitated, the door opened quickly, and Lorin and his uncle came upon them.