In his luxurious drawing-room Allan Lyster sat alone. He was engaged to
dine with a party of guardsmen at Richmond, but he hardly felt in
spirits to go. This was Thursday; never dreaming that Lady Atherton
would fail him, he had faithfully promised to pay his bet on Friday. It
was now Thursday evening, and he had heard nothing from her. He had not
the least intention of really betraying her to her husband--he knew the
character of an English gentleman too well for that. He knew that if
Lord Atherton had but the least suspicion of the vilely treacherous way
in which he had preyed upon his innocent wife, he would, in all
probability, thrash him within an inch of his life.
He was far from being comfortable, and wished that he had taken
Adelaide's advice and had gone less rashly to work--had been content
with less. After all, he felt compelled to own that he had been rather
hard upon her.
"Let her send this time," he said to himself, "and I will not trouble
her again just yet."
He was seated in a luxurious lounging chair, on the table by his side
was a bottle of finest Cognac, and he was enjoying the flavor of a very
fine cigar. Notwithstanding all these comforts, Allan Lyster was not
happy.
"I cannot think," he said to himself, "why she does not send."
At that moment he heard a sharp ring at the door bell.
"That is the messenger," he said to himself, triumphantly, "and it is
quite time, too."
But it was a man's heavy footstep that mounted the stairs, and when
Allan Lyster looked anxiously at the door, he was astonished to see Lord
Atherton enter, carrying a thick riding whip in his hand.
He sprang obsequiously from his chair.
"I am delighted to see you, my lord," he began, but one look at that
white, stern face froze the words on his lips. Lord Atherton waved his
hand.
"I want those letters, sir!" he cried, in a voice of thunder--"those
letters that you have, holding as a sword over the head of my wife!"
"What if I refuse to give them?" replied Allan.
"Then I shall take them from you. I have read this precious epistle, in
which you threaten to show them to me. Now bring them here."
"I am not accustomed, my lord, to this treatment."
Lord Atherton's face flushed, his eyes seemed to flame fire.
"Not a word; bring them to me! You have traded for the last time upon a
woman's weakness and fears. I will read the letters, then I will tell
you what I think of you."
"Better tell your wife," sneered the other, "what you think of her."
"My wife is a lady," was the quiet reply--"a lady for whom I have the
greatest honor, respect and esteem. Your lips simply sully her name, and
I refuse to hear it from you."
"She did not always think so," was the sullen reply. "If you had not
stepped in and robbed me, she would have been my wife now."
The white anger of that face, and the convulsive movement of the hand
that held the heavy whip, might have warned him.
"I want those letters," repeated Lord Atherton; "bring them to me at
once. Remember, they are useless to you; you will never force one mere
farthing from Lady Atherton--your keeping them will be useless."
"It will be more to my interest to keep them," sneered Allan Lyster;
"they are interesting documents, and I can show them to those who will
not judge the matter in so onesided a manner as your lordship."
"You may publish them, if you please," said Lord Atherton, "but I will
take care that every line in them brands you with red hot shame. You
shall publish them, and I will make all England ring with the story of
your infamy. I will make every honest man loathe you."
"You cannot," said Allan Lyster.
"I can. Englishmen like fair play. I will tell all England how you took
advantage of a girl's youth and inexperience, above all, of the fact of
her being an orphan, to beguile her into making you a promise of
marriage, and how since you have traded, you coward, on her weakness, on
her love for her husband, on the best part of her nature; and I will
tell my story so honestly, so well, that every honest man shall hate
you. You may have frightened my poor wife with shadows, you cannot so
frighten me. I tell you, and I am speaking truthfully, that I do not
care if you print her letters and every man, woman and child read them;
they shall read my vindication of her and my denunciation of you."
"You see, Lord Atherton, she did promise to marry me, and I did reckon
upon her fortune. What will you give me for the letters?"
"Nothing. If, after reading them, I find you really received, from the
pure and noble lady who is now my wife, a promise of marriage, I will
give you some compensation. I will give you two thousand pounds,
although I know that promise to have been drawn from her by fraud,
treachery and cunning."
Allan Lyster began to see, in his own phrase, that the game was up. He
unlocked the door of a little cabinet, and took from it a bundle of
papers. He gave them to Lord Atherton, who, still standing, read them
word for word.
"It is as I thought," he said, when he came to the last. "It is the
worst case of fraud, deception and cowardice I have ever met. Nothing
could be more mean, more dishonorable, more revolting. Still, as the
promise is true, I will give you a check for two thousand pounds when
you have destroyed them."
Very slowly and deliberately Allan Lyster tore the letters into the
smallest shreds, until they all were destroyed, then Lord Atherton,
taking a check book from his pocket, wrote him out a check for two
thousand pounds.
Allan took it sullenly enough.
"If I had my rights," he said, "I should have more than that every
quarter."
"That is as it may be," said Lord Atherton, quietly. "You may have
deceived a very young and inexperienced girl; but you would not,
perhaps, have been so successful when that same girl was able to compare
you with others. Now I have paid you; remember, I do not seek to
purchase your silence. I leave it entirely to your own option whether
you tell your story or not. I know that you cannot brand yourself with
deeper disgrace and shame than by making public your share in this
transaction."
Allan Lyster murmured some insolent words which his lordship did not
choose to hear. He straightened the lash of his whip.
"Now," he continued, blandly, "I am going to give you a lesson. I am
going to teach you several things. The first is to respect the trusts
that parents and governesses place in you when they confide young girls
to you for lessons; the second, is to respect women, and not, like a
vile, mean coward, to trade upon their secrets; and the third lesson I
wish to give you is to make you an honest man, to teach you to live on
your own earnings, and not on the price of a woman's tears. This is how
I would enforce my lesson."
He raised that strong right arm of his and rained down heavy blows on
the cowardly traitor who had taken a woman's money as the price of his
honor and manhood. His face never for one moment lost its calm; but the
strong arm did its work, until the coward whined for pity. Then Lord
Atherton broke his whip in two and flung it on the floor.
"I should not like to touch even a dog with it," he said, "after it has
touched you."
He stood still for some moments to see if the coward would make any
effort to rise and revenge himself; but the man who had been content to
live on a woman's misery thought the safest plan was to lie still on the
floor.
"I shall be happy to repeat my lesson," said his lordship, calmly, "if
you require it again."
Allan Lyster made no reply, and Lord Atherton walked away. When he was
quite gone, and the last sound of his footsteps died away, he rose--he
shook his fist in impotent wrath:
"Curse him!" he cried. "It shall go hard with me but I will be equal
with him yet!"
He had played his last card and lost; henceforward there was nothing for
him but hard work and dishonor. He knew that what Lord Atherton had said
was true; if any one knew what he had done, nothing but hatred and
disgust would be his portion.
Lord Atherton went at once to Scotland Yard and asked for a detective.
He showed him the portrait of his wife, told him she had left home under
a false impression, and that he would give him fifty pounds if he could
trace her.
For a week all effort was in vain, they could hear nothing of her; then
one morning Lord Atherton saw an advertisement in the "Times," and he
said to himself that the lost was found.