Chapter V

Thus far had Wallace Armstrong proceeded in his unique love-making, when the lady he meant to wed in a few days' time disconcerted him by bursting into a hearty peal of laughter.

"Look at my hand," she said, pulling off her glove and showing a soft pink palm. "I had my fortune told several months ago, and I am not to fall in love until I am years older than I am now."

"Give me your hand," he said. "I know something of palmistry, too."

This statement was absolutely untrue. But, as he meant to leave no means untried to gain his end, and could see that the girl half believed in the fortune told by her hand, he resolved to practise on her childish credulity and superstition. In truth, he did not know one line from another, and could only decide that it was a nice soft girl's hand and eminently kissable.

"Show me your line of fate!" he said, peremptorily.

Laline eagerly pointed it out.

"As I suspected," he said, crumpling her hand together to emphasise the lines and looking absorbed in the study of them; "very early in your career you fall under the influence of a man of far stronger will than yours. His line of fate and yours run side by side, and only death can separate them!"

He spoke with much solemnity, but, more than his words, the magnetism of his touch affected Laline's sensitive nature. She shivered and turned pale.

"Can you really read that in my hand?" she asked, fearfully.

"Clearly. This man will love you, and you will not be able to escape from him. Before you are seventeen you will be his wife."

"Oh, it's impossible!"

"Not at all. It's inevitable," he said--"written indelibly, for all who understand to read, here in the centre of your hand!"

And, as he spoke in slow impressive tones, he pointed his finger at random into her upturned palm. Looking up to see the effect of his prophecy, he found that she was leaning back in her seat, pale to the lips.

"What is the matter, child?" he exclaimed.

"You will laugh," she answered, in a low troubled tone, "but, as you held my hand and told me these things, something flashed into my head that you were right, and that there would be in my life a will against which I should fight in vain. The feeling terrified me, and I can't forget it!"

She raised her hands to her eyes, in which tears were shining, and pressed them close. Wallace Armstrong watched her, surprised and amused by what he considered her folly and weak-mindedness. In reality Laline was neither foolish nor specially weak-minded, only abnormally sensitive to influences to which a coarser nature would have been impervious. Looking into Wallace Armstrong's bold bright eyes, in the depths of which a scornful smile was lurking, the young girl seemed to read there, better than any fortune-teller could inform her, a will, selfish, resolute, and cruel, a nature attracted by and yet strongly antagonistic to her own, a personality she might grow to fear and even, it might be, to hate, but which she would never be able to regard with indifference.

Not in so many words did these convictions come upon her, but the sense of them grew as she gazed, her soft, near-sighted eyes, that had something of the wistfulness of a dumb animal, straining to realize what she saw.

At last Wallace broke the silence with a laugh.

"If we sit so still, staring at each other, people will think that I am mesmerising you," he said. "And, by-the-way, I believe I could."

"Please don't try!" she exclaimed, starting from her seat and pushing her hair from her forehead with a quick nervous gesture peculiar to her. "I must be getting back home now to see after papa's dinner."

"I will walk up with you," he said; "but you haven't yet told me whether you would like to go back to England, leaving your father comfortably settled here, provided for for life, and with all his bills paid."

"Why do you ask me such questions," she said, "when you know what you suggest is impossible?"

Then an inspiration seized Armstrong. In his pocket was another advance from his uncle to provide his niece Laline with medicines, new clothes, and other necessaries. Wallace directed his steps to the Rue Royale.

"Come and look in this jeweller's shop-window," he said, "and tell me whether you are fond of trinkets."

"Very fond," she answered, "and I often look in here."

"Don't you want to have some of the pretty things?"

"I should, I dare say, if I had any money. But I have never had any jewelry except my dear mother's gold watch and chain. I hope I shall never part with that; but I don't wear it, because it is a great deal out of repair, and I can't afford to have it put right."

"Come inside and look at the things," he said. "Oh, it's all right," he added, seeing that she hesitated; "I have to buy something for myself!"

Once within the jeweller's shop, Wallace approached the attendant and held towards him Laline's hand.

"I want a very pretty ring for this young lady," he said in French. "Take off your glove, Laline."

In her astonishment she did not notice that, for the first time, he called her by her name without any prefix. Before she could do more than stammer a few words of inquiry, Wallace had deftly unbuttoned her glove and drawn it off, and the smiling attendant was showing her a trayful of rings.

"Here is one suitable to mademoiselle," the man suggested, showing her two tiny pearl hearts intertwined with a true-lover's knot.

"They are all too large!" Wallace complained. "No--I can't wait for one to be altered. Have you nothing smaller?"

A turquoise heart, surrounded by very small diamonds, proved so small that, once it was thrust upon the girl's finger, it could hardly be withdrawn. Wallace beat the price down to a hundred francs, and paid the money over the counter before Laline could do more than gasp an astonished protest.

"Now that you are formally engaged to me," he said, "I may as well order the wedding-ring, too."

This he proceeded to do, and, having at length discovered one of suitable smallness, he slipped the little parcel into his pocket, after paying for it, and left the shop, drawing Laline's arm through his in an authoritative manner as he did so.

"We will fetch your father," he said, "and we will all dine in the town together to celebrate our engagement."

"But, Mr. Armstrong," gasped Laline, "you must be in fun! Do you know that I am only sixteen?"

"Well, plenty of your friends over here get married at sixteen," he returned, "and my own mother was married before her seventeenth birthday!"

"But I don't want to marry you!"

"Not to go to England, to live in a big, beautiful house under my care and that of my old uncle, one of the worthiest and kindest old gentlemen alive, who is simply longing to welcome you as his daughter, and writes to me about you nearly every day?"

"Why, what can you mean?" she was beginning, when he drew from his pocket the letter from his uncle which he had received that morning, and, carefully folding down one portion, held it before her eyes.

The lines which the girl read ran thus:--

"Give my love to Laline, and tell her how much I look forward to welcoming her in my house. If she is like your description, she must indeed be a sweet and womanly young creature. Be sure to buy her all that she requires. I want my niece to enter her new home in the style that befits a lady of gentle birth and careful training."

"I can't understand it!" exclaimed Laline, bewildered. "You never told me that you had been writing about me to your uncle. And what does he mean by calling me his niece?"

"I told him I hoped to marry you very shortly."

"But you never even asked me!"

"You are too young to know your own mind, so it had to be made up for you," he said, laughing. "Now listen, Laline dear. As soon as I saw you it went to my heart to think that you were wasting your youth and beauty and refinement among such coarse and sordid surroundings. An atmosphere of unpaid bills and greasy cards and cognac was not suited for so fresh and sweet a flower. I know your father thoroughly well. I won't talk about him lest I should hurt your feelings. But he is not the man to be entrusted with the care of a girl like you; and, had your dear mother lived to see you degraded into a half-starved kitchen drudge, friendless and neglected----"

"Don't--ah, don't!" cried Laline, passionately. "I can't bear it!"

By that outburst he understood how keenly the girl felt her position, and how well-timed had been his allusion to her lost mother. At once he followed up his advantage.

"You want a home, my dear little girl," he continued, drawing her hand through his arm and patting it affectionately. "This is not the place for you, and these are not the surroundings you ought to have. In my home you will enjoy what should be your position by right--that of an English lady! You will be petted and loved and cared for, you will have your own rooms and your own furniture, pocket-money to spend on pretty frocks and little presents for your friends, plenty of books to read, ample leisure and servants to wait upon you. My uncle, Alexander Wallace, is one of the richest bankers in London, and I am his favourite nephew and heir. You will have just what money you want now; and, later on, you will be an extremely rich woman, able to buy diamonds and horses and carriages and everything that you wish for in the world."

She turned her wondering eyes upon him.

"And what makes you offer me all these things?" she asked, simply.

"Because I love you," was the answer on the tip of his tongue; and he was angry with both her and himself because he could not speak it. Something in her absolute innocence and candour disarmed him. Almost for one moment he wished that he could tell her the whole truth in words of brutal frankness--"Because I am a ruined and dishonoured good-for-nothing, and my only hope of help consists in the immediate production of a wife at my rich uncle's house! I have chosen you because you are very pretty, and too young and ignorant of the world to disbelieve my lying statements. Also because you have a mercenary scamp of a father, who has sold you to me for my wife for a consideration! I don't pretend to love you; much of your society would bore me to death. But I don't intend to have much of your society; and you are just the good, sweet-faced, refined sort of a little girl to get round my uncle, and coax money out of him for my extravagances!"

This is what Wallace Armstrong longed for one brief moment to say. He felt that he should despise himself less than if he were successful in deceiving her. But he was not in the habit of following good impulses when they stood in the way of his interests; and he slipped again into lying, and cleverly affecting a kindly and tender interest in the girl, until Rue Planché was reached and they entered the street together.

Then suddenly Laline, who had been listening to him in silence, stopped. She had something she wished to say to him before she entered the house. Her tones were low and earnest, and her eyes were grave.

"It is all very strange and wonderful," she said, "that you, who have known me so short a time, and your uncle, who has never seen me, should love me and want me to be with you always. I don't deserve it, and I don't understand it! There must be so many beautiful girls who would be much more suitable to you than I can be. And--I can't understand why, and it seems dreadfully ungrateful--but all the time you are talking I seem to hear whispered in my ear, 'Don't listen; he does not mean what he says!' And though you are so kind, and though I long to go back to England, and cannot bear the life here, I--I am afraid of you!"

Although she half whispered the last words, there was no mistaking the startled look in her eyes. At that moment Armstrong positively disliked her, although her slight opposition only had the effect of making him more than ever determined to carry through his project.

What business had this ignorant child with intuitions warning her against him? Was it possible that under her demure and child-like exterior there lurked a spirit which would not easily be swayed and mastered by his own? Some hint of this flashed upon him as he watched her and listened to her faltering confession.

"You need never be afraid of me," he said, gently. "My ways are unpolished, I know. I have been knocking about in Australia for nearly five years, roughing it in the Bush and among miners. I wanted to see something of the world before marrying and settling down in England. But you shall cure my uncouth ways, and correct all my other defects, too, my dear Laline!"

Once in the house, and alone with Captain Garth in his den, Wallace's tone changed.

"For Heaven's sake give me a drop of brandy to wash out of my mouth the taste of all the lies I've been telling!" he cried, irritably. "It's my opinion, Garth, that little bread-and-butter prig of yours will be dear at the price!"

"She's a good child, and won't give you any trouble," Laline's father assured him, soothingly. "Have you broached the subject of the marriage to her yet?"

"Your fingers are itching to touch the two 'quid' a week, I see!" sneered Armstrong, as he tossed off a glass of neat cognac. "Oh, it's safe enough! She's delighted at the idea, which is more than I am. However, it's got to be gone through with. Unluckily, I've promised to take her and you to dine with me in the town this evening. Can't we put her off?"

Garth shook his head dubiously.

"Better not," he said. "If she's left alone, she'll get thinking--she's a great one for thinking and dreaming and fancying. Now that the thing's settled, she had better not be left alone this evening."

"As you like. But, mind, I've had enough of nursery courtship; and she mustn't expect to see much of me during the next few days. On the third, as soon as the ceremony is over, we will cross by the midday boat; and Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Armstrong will proceed to London and dine on fat veal, _au Fils Prodigue_! It will be time enough to tell Laline the day when her frocks are ready."

"Here's to your happy married life!" observed Garth, pouring himself out some brandy. "I hope you'll be kind to her, Armstrong, when I am not by to look after her!"

Up-stairs in her own room, Laline was kneeling before her little dressing-table of painted deal, gazing earnestly at her dead mother's portrait.

"Mother," she murmured, with tears in her eyes, "if you could only speak to me and advise me! Is it your voice which seems to tell me not to listen to Mr. Armstrong? And yet he seems so kind, and he is going to be so good and generous to papa! Such a fairy prince to such a poor little penniless Cinderella! How good it is of him to be so sorry for me--to sympathise with me so deeply about losing you, and to understand how much it would hurt you to know just how things have been since you left me! I remember how you once said to me, while I sat reading at your feet and you smoothed my hair, 'I hope and pray that my little girl may some day marry a good man, who will love her for herself, as a woman should be loved!' I have not remembered that speech until to-day. I wanted to wait for years before I thought of love and marriage for myself. There is no one to help me and advise me. Oh, mother, if you could only come back for one moment and tell me what to do!"

But the wills of two unscrupulous men were warring against the vague intuitions of an inexperienced girl; and every day the net was drawn more closely about Laline's feet, until the dawn of the thirtieth of August, her wedding-morning.