An hour later. Lady Jean sits alone in her boudoir. Her guests have
all gone. A flush of excitement burns on her cheek, her eyes look
triumphant.
"Victory at last!" she murmurs to herself. "When she hears he is
dead, and has met his death through my instrumentality, I think she
will know that I too can avenge insult. I have taken her husband and
her lover from her. I said my hour would come. It has come."
There is a stir, a noise of footsteps without. The door is thrust
hurriedly open, and Count Karolyski comes in. Involuntarily Lady
Jean rises. She is annoyed and troubled, and a little afraid.
"Monsieur, you know I do not receive at this hour."
"So your people told me, but my business pleads an excuse. I will
not detain you long, madame. I have come to say I will spare
your--lover--on one condition."
"I do not understand you," falters Lady Jean, turning very pale. He
smiles his cold and evil smile.
"No? Well, I will put it more plainly. I will retract my words.
This duel shall not take place if you will be my wife."
She turns on him, angry and amazed. "Monsieur, you do me much
honour. But what I have refused to love, I will scarcely yield to
intimidation!"
He draws his breath sharply.
"Stay; listen to me. Take heed before you refuse. I have told you I
have scoffed at love all my life till you taught me to recant my
error. A man at my age does not love lightly, nor is he easily
turned from his purpose. To win you I would do anything--to lose you
drives me desperate. If you refuse my prayer to-night, your
boy-lover shall never see your face again. I swear it, and my oath
is no less fatal than my hand can be."
She turns aside; there is a smile of triumph on her lips. Has she
fooled him so well that he actually believes Keith Athelstone is his
rival?
As she stands there, silent and thoughtful, a servant knocks at the
door and enters with a telegram.
She hastily seizes it and reads the contents, and all the blood seems
to forsake her face. Trembling, she sinks into a chair.
"If all should be lost even now?" she thinks, and her eyes turn in
momentary appeal to the stern. cold face of the Count. "I--I will
think of what you have said," she falters. "But, believe me, you are
wrong when you think Keith Athelstone is anything to me. He is not;
he never will be. As for his life I would not spare it if I could."
"What?" he cries, amazed.
"He--he has insulted me," stammers Lady Jean. "I cannot tell you--I
cannot explain; only if you love me you will avenge me--not by his
death, that I would not say .... I wish you to wound him, and in such
a manner that the issue may be fatal--or otherwise--but in any case
that it may be uncertain enough to allow of a messenger being sent to
England to--a--a friend of his. Do you understand?"
"That I am to be a tool for you? Perfectly, madame. And my reward?"
"You shall ask for it when you have done my bidding," she murmurs
softly, and holds out her hand for the clasp of that one whose stains
of blood-guiltiness are to receive yet another addition, at her
bidding.
He takes hers, and bends down and presses his lips upon it fervently.
"I will do your will," he says; "he shall live to suffer. But,
madame, remember, I am no fool to be trifled with. If you fail in
your part of the bargain it will be at your own peril. Neither man
nor woman has ever baulked me of my will, who has not lived to rue
it. You may have fooled a score of men, but you shall not fool me!
Love like mine may be play to rouse, but it is death when roused."
She looks him calmly in the face. "I have no intention of deceiving
you. Promise me that Keith Athelstone shall have but a few days'
life left--and----"
Her glance promises the rest. It has all the intoxication, the
responsive meaning, that can inflame men's passions--that has ever
swayed them to her will. It sways him now.
He draws her to his heart with a fierce and sudden tenderness, and
she lets his lips rest unrebuked upon her own. "I promise," he
murmurs; and she knows he means it.
The telegram that has reached Lady Jean has been despatched from
Monte Carlo. It contains these lines:
"_Sir Francis Vavasour lies here dangerously ill--it is feared with
typhoid fever. He asks constantly for you. Come at once._"
When Lady Jean is once more alone she reads the message with a
contemptuous laugh.
"He must be mad," she says. "I to run the risk of infection--I to
turn sick-nurse! I to run the gauntlet of scandal and discussion
for--him! Pshaw! if he wants a ministering angel, let him send to
Lauraine. It is her _metier_, not mine." Then she goes to her
writing-table and takes pen and ink and writes these lines:
"Your husband is dangerously ill. The enclosed telegram will
explain. Keith Athelstone was severely wounded in a duel fought in
Paris this evening, and he has only a few days to live. If you wish
to see him alive come at once. He is at Lady Jean Salomans' house,
No. 13, Rue Victoire Paris."
This letter she seals and addresses and despatches immediately.
Then, with that same light of triumph in her eyes, that same
relentless and unsparing hate in her heart, she goes to her room and
to rest.
No ill dreams disturb her--no sleepless hours of weary wakefulness.
She has never known remorse in all her life, and in her ears the
"still, small voice" of conscience has long ceased to whisper. And
as her eyes close in sleep to-night she only thinks: "Vengeance is
mine!"