A Woman Martyr

								

to her love, and Vansittart’s.
But how?
"I will dare him," was her instinct.  "I will tell him to claim me if he
can!"  But that was the madness of passion.  Reason bade her use other
means.
"One must fight a man with his own weapons," she told herself, as the
hansom dashed along Gloucester Place, and she knew her time was short.
It was now nearer nine than eight--she had seen that by an illuminated
clock over a shop.  He was to be at their trysting-place of old, when
she had lodged with her old nurse in a street in Camden Town, at eight.
"He lied to me from the first moment to the last.  I must lie to him. I
will pretend I have cared for him!  It will put him off his guard," she
thought, as, with a double fee to the cabman, who said "thank-ye, miss,"
with odious familiarity, she scurried away in the darkness, and crossing
the wet road, turned up that which led to the Inner Circle.
There was no chance of forgetting the spot where they two had last met!
As she neared it, a slim, dark figure stepped out from the shadow.
"My wife," he exclaimed, in emotional tones.  He would have embraced
her, but she slipped away and leant up against the paling.
"You can call me that--after leaving me all these years--not knowing
whether you were alive or dead," she panted hoarsely. Under any
circumstances emotion was natural, so she made no effort to conceal it.
"I?  It was you who would not reply to my letters!" he exclaimed
bitterly.  "I wrote again and again, under cover to your miserable old
nurse--and don’t say you never had them!  The last came back to me--’not
known.’  But the others did not--they would have if they had not
reached!"
"If she had them, she never gave them to me!" she said truthfully.  "And
I don’t wonder!  I was so utterly wretched when I read of
your--your--flight--that I told her--all!  I had to--I should have gone
raving mad if I had kept it to myself!"
"Well, all that is over and done with, thank goodness!" he exclaimed,
cheerfully, after a brief pause.  "I will not scold you for misjudging
me--you were but a child! But you are a woman now, of age, your own
mistress!  I have been fortunate of late, or I should not be here.
Speculations of mine have turned up trumps--and not only that, but I
have friends in the City who will introduce me to your uncle, and if you
only play your cards well, our real wedding shall be followed by a sham
one, and Mrs. Victor a’Court will take a very nice place in society. My
dear, cash opens all doors, and I have it!"
"Some one is coming," she said feebly. His speech had called forth all
her powers of endurance, and, while bracing herself to bear up as she
did, Nature determinedly asserted itself.  She felt cold and giddy--her
limbs seemed as if they did not belong to her.
"Only a Bobby," he said, with a light vulgarity which seemed the last
straw.  As she turned to walk along by his side, she tottered.