Chapter XXVIII

Every nerve in Clare's body was tingling with revengeful joy over the possession of her rival's secret.

Of Laline's selfishness in wanting to marry both the Armstrongs she could not think without hot indignation. Ignoring the mistake which Laline had made on her first meeting with Lorin, Clare naturally supposed that her rival had deliberately gone to work to win Lorin from his allegiance, although she knew herself to be already married.

That Laline detested her husband was very clear. Under an entirely new light Clare recalled the short and angry scene between them to which she had been a witness on the preceding Sunday.

Doubtless, so Clare decided, Laline was at present drawing back and holding Lorin off only in order to pique him into an immediate union; and Miss Cavan set her short, sharp, white teeth vindictively together as she planned destruction to Laline's schemes.

"Of course she married the one cousin for his money, and probably found him a brute and ran away from him. Then she must have trusted to not meeting him or to his not recognising her when she set to work to get hold of the other! What consummate impudence! I really almost admire her for it. Now if I can only find Wallace Armstrong the elder, and find him sober, I shall be the blessed means of restoring a missing wife to a loving husband's arms."

A very unpleasant smile curved her thin scarlet lips as she reflected thus while completing a hasty outdoor toilet before the looking-glass in her room. Opening her door, she stealthily crept out to listen for sounds from the floor below; then, reassured by the perfect stillness, she fled noiselessly down and out of the house, sprang into a hansom in the High Street, and directed the driver to Wallace Armstrong's lodgings off the Strand, where once before she had called in order to deliver "A Well-Wisher's" warning letter.

Mr. Armstrong was out, Clare was informed by an elderly housekeeper, who gazed at her with evident suspicion, and who evidently disapproved of a beautiful and well-dressed young lady calling at the rooms of a handsome and dissipated bachelor at nine o'clock in the evening.

But Clare was too much excited to be sensitive on this point, and at once begged for an envelope and a piece of paper, upon which she scribbled an emphatic mandate to Wallace to come at once to St. Mary's Crescent on receipt of her message at any time before midnight.

"Drive very slowly along the Strand," she told her driver, when she left the house; "I am looking out for some one."

Laline's evil star was in the ascendant that night, for Clare's cab had not proceeded many yards, with its occupant craning her neck out of it, when she suddenly signalled to the driver to stop.

For there, before her eyes, lurching along the Strand, with his hands in his pockets, on his way from one drinking-bar to another, was the object of her search--Wallace Armstrong, Laline's husband.

Laline's husband! Clare's heart leaped in triumph at the thought, which amply avenged her for any slights and disappointments Laline had unwittingly caused her to suffer.

_In vino veritas_--and, after three or four hours of constant tippling, there was that about this man's face which it was not good to see. The "ape-and-tiger" qualities within him, which for over ten years his way of life had fostered and developed, never very far beneath the surface, were rampant now, and stared from his bloodshot angry eyes, and showed themselves again in his rolling walk, his hot clenched hands, and swollen, sullen mouth. Had Clare Cavan's nature held aught of the womanly she would have shrunk from the notion of handing even an enemy over to the tender mercies of such a man as this.

But Clare Gavan had no pity for the girl who had supplanted her in her aunt's favour and in the love of so rich and handsome a suitor as Lorin Armstrong; and, although she was annoyed at the stupefied condition in which she had found the man of her search, she was by no means minded to put off her interview with him.

Stopping her cab, she sprang out and seized Wallace by the arm.

At first he stared at her stupidly, then, with a laugh and an oath, he tried to shake her off.

"Mr. Armstrong, don't you know me?" she hissed in his ear. "I am Clare Cavan, niece to Mrs. Vandeleur. We had a talk yesterday--about your cousin and that Miss Lina Grahame he is engaged to. Don't you remember?"

"Curse them both!"

He was swaying heavily in his walk, and hardly seemed capable of understanding her words; but Clare was not inclined to lose a moment.

"Jump into this cab with me!" she urged, holding tight to his arm, in part to sustain his halting footsteps and in part to impress the importance of her mission upon him. "People are staring at us. We can't talk here; and I have something I must tell you."

His spirit-laden breath made her faint and sick with disgust; but spite was stronger in Clare at that moment than any other feeling, and she waited quietly while Wallace hurled his massive form into the seat by her side, and with tipsy hilarity flung his arm about her waist.

"I remember you now," he hiccoughed--"the wicked little red-haired girl, whom I kissed yesterday afternoon over the tea-table when I went to the little witch's house to see what Lorin's girl was like! I hate that girl! I dreamed of her scornful face and disdainful eyes; and she 'cottons' to my precious cousin, and is down on me just because I am poor and out of favour. It's the way of the world--the way of the world----"

"Should you like," broke in Miss Cavan, impatient of his maudlin prolixity--"should you like an opportunity of punishing this girl for her insulting conduct towards you, and of paying out your cousin at the same time for having stolen your place in your uncle's favour?"

"Should I like? Give me the chance!"

"What would you give," Clare asked slowly and distinctly, "to have that girl in your power, to know that you were her master, and that she could not escape from you, while Lorin, whose wife she was to have become, gnashed his teeth and tore his hair with jealousy and rage?"

"What would I give? I think I would give my soul--if any one would take it!"

"I have come to you to-night," pursued Clare, her eyes glittering like emeralds under sunlight, "to tell you that this girl, Lina Grahame, is your lost wife, Laline Garth!"

"Laline! By----! I half guessed it!"

The shock of the news sobered him. For some seconds he sat by her side, perfectly quiet, staring in front of him and pulling at his heavy moustache. Then, suddenly turning upon her, he asked, in an altered tone--

"How did you find all this out? Mind, I know it's true; I don't require proofs. Jove! How she brazened it out to-day, trying to stare me in the eyes while I held her hands! She's a confoundedly good actress! But all you women are good at lying and deceiving. What possessed her, though, to confide in you?"

"She didn't confide in me. She has no idea that I have discovered her secret. She doesn't mean that any one shall know. Your half recognising her must have frightened her, though. She has been talking of breaking off her engagement to Lorin and of going off somewhere by herself."

"Her engagement to Lorin! My wife's engagement!"

He burst into a coarse laugh of enjoyment--a long laugh, during the course of which Clare watched him impatiently.

"Well, what do you mean to do?" she asked at length. "Do you mean to stand quietly by and see your model cousin take not only your inheritance but actually your wife from under your nose?"

"No, by----, I don't! Laline shall come with me. I'll break her spirit and tame her pride for her! She always gave promise of being pretty, but she's a real beauty now! So that's the reason of her black looks and scornful words--eh? Husband number one had turned up to spoil sport just as husband number two was fairly hooked. Upon my soul, the impudence of it beats me! And this slim, Christian-martyr-like saint, who looks almost too pure for things of this earth, was coolly planning bigamy all the time, and would have carried it through but for the chance of your finding her out! Hang the hussy! She has cost me a pretty penny already. Her father ruined me, when I married her to get him out of a hole, and she bolted on our wedding-day----"

"On your wedding-day? I thought you had been married a month!"

"How should I know? It all happened years ago. Anyhow, there shan't be any doubt that she's my wife now."

"I wouldn't claim her to-night if I were you," purred Clare. "I wouldn't come to the house and make a scene so late. I would wait until the morning. Lorin is coming in the morning at about twelve, so you will know when to time your visit. But you must take her by surprise and appeal to her sense of duty, otherwise I know her quite well enough to be sure she will give you the slip again. For you know she doesn't like you."

"I know she hates me," he returned coolly, stopping the cab as he spoke. "Here we are in the High Street, and I'll stroll back home and think things over. My head aches a bit. I know Laline hates me, but, by Jove, she doesn't hate me as you hate her! I could almost find it in me to be sorry for the poor wretch now that you've got your knife so deeply into her," he concluded, as Clare bent out over the hansom and gave him her hand in parting. "You are delighted with this night's work," he said roughly, "because you think you have handed over a girl you hate to a drunken brute who will ill-treat her."

"I am glad," she said, with a narrow smile that showed her white teeth, "to have found for Laline a husband of whom any girl might be proud. Good-night, Mr. Armstrong."

He could have struck her sneering red lips and forced the lie back into her throat. He hardly knew which of the two he hated the most at that moment--himself or her. He stood staring after the hansom for some seconds after it had driven away, and threw an oath or two after it before resuming his stumbling walk Strandwards.

"There goes my match," he said to himself.

He was perfectly clear in his thoughts by this time, though still unsteady on his feet. All through his moral turpitude, his treachery, ingratitude, and bitter sneers at his betters he never for one moment deceived himself, as so many better and worse men have done, by believing himself a fine and noble character labouring under undeserved persecution.

Right down in his heart he knew that Laline was infinitely too good for him, and that, if her love was given to Lorin, it was the man and not his money that she prized. Her treatment of himself he resented bitterly, but he knew full well that she, of all people, had good reason for despising him. Years ago he had learned that the true reason of his bride's flight lay in the fact that she had overheard the interview between her father and himself immediately after the ceremony in the registry-office, and had thus been rudely thrust from her fool's paradise of childish gratitude and affection.

At the time her flight had angered him, as it had rendered the task of propitiating his uncle and extracting money from him more difficult; but for the girl herself he had had few regrets that an extra glass of cognac could not effectually drown. She had been only a pretty ungainly child then; but now it was very different.

Staggering along the snow-covered streets, he laughed aloud as he thought of the blow he was about to direct against both his cousin and Laline.

"Lorin's fond of unselfishness," he reflected, sardonically. "He's always had a mania for giving up things to me--I wonder how he will like giving me up my wife? The joke of it is that, whatever I may do, she must certainly be in the wrong in the eyes of everybody, for the simple reason that I am her husband--husband to one of the prettiest women in London, and I didn't know my own luck till half an hour ago. Lorin will be hard hit; but I'll make him a present of the red-haired one, and she'll keep his hands full looking after her. My doddering old uncle will be delighted. He'll bless us and weep over us and set us up in the Homestead; and, by Jove, I'll invite Lorin to dinner and bully Laline before him! I knew her eyes in a moment--I remember how that innocent stare of hers used to make me uncomfortable years ago. For every scornful word, for every scornful look, I'll pay her back a hundredfold. While she was Lorin's sweetheart there were leagues before us, and nothing I could say or do could touch her; but, now that she is my wife, I think I can punish her, and her hatred will give a wonderful zest and excitement to our future life together."

It was very necessary, however, that she should not be frightened away prematurely. Wallace forgot even to drink as he walked on, his brain becoming clearer at every step. He must have an interview with Laline on the following morning, and he would not come too early--a very early visit will start her fears, and she might refuse to see him--but about midday. Then, with a flush of excitement, he recollected that his cousin was to call at St. Mary's Crescent at twelve.

"She is certain to see him," he reflected, with a grin; "and when they are comfortably _tête-à-tête_, and he is well into the swing of his wooing, urging her to marry him at once, and she coyly deprecating and kissing--no doubt they will be kissing--I will tip the servant to show me right into the room where they are. _Tableau!_ It will be the finest moment of my life!"

Having settled his plans for the morrow with elaborate cunning, Wallace reeled off to finish the evening among his favourite tavern acquaintances, to drink a farewell to his bachelor-existence, as he put it in his own mind, although he knew quite well he should encounter from Laline a desperate resistance against his wish to take her back again.

"But my will is stronger than hers," he reflected. "I remember frightening her once by telling her some stuff I invented about the lines of her hand. My will should dominate hers, and our fates should be bound up the one in the other, or some such nonsense. But it had a bit of truth in it all the same."

Not one word concerning Laline did he breathe to his cousin when they met at the bank on the following morning. Lorin, as he observed, looked pale and worried and anxious. At half-past eleven the younger Armstrong left the building, and Wallace quickly followed him. Lorin hailed a hansom, his cousin followed in another, which he stopped opposite the narrow turning into St. Mary's Crescent.

Wallace, from across the road, saw his cousin admitted into Mrs. Vandeleur's house, whither he was bent on following him. Meantime he walked up and down on the opposite side of the way, smoking and watching the narrow opening to the Crescent, the while he revelled in the joys of vengeful anticipation.

"Just a quarter of an hour, and I will darken your horizons!" he said, and chuckled to himself.

But very much may happen where emotions are concerned in fifteen minutes by the clock, and, long before then, Lorin Armstrong had found himself alone in the presence of Laline.

Mrs. Vandeleur had said so far not one word of last night's discovery to Laline. She had sent for her at an unusually early hour in the morning, and had kept her fully employed, on one pretext or another, until Lorin's arrival. Then, when Susan announced his name, Laline sprang from her seat and would have left the room, but Mrs. Vandeleur detained her.

"You must see him!" she exclaimed imperatively, laying her hand on the girl's arm. "And you must tell him the truth--the whole truth. It is the only course fair alike to him and to you."

Then, before the girl could speak, the little sibyl had glided from the room, giving place to Lorin, and the door had closed behind him.

"Lina, my darling--at last!" he had cried, stretching his arms towards her. But she, with a white, terrified face, had held up her hands to ward off his caress.

"Don't!" she called out in a strangled voice. "Lorin, we must not love each other! And I have deceived you, for I am a married woman!"