A Woman Martyr

								

do?  Before I tell you my ideas, let’s hear yours.  Place aux dames
was always my motto."
During her long vigil, scheme after scheme of escaping him and of
belonging irrevocably to Vansittart, one plan wilder than another, had
agitated her mind.  She had at last arrived at one set
conclusion--Victor Mercier must be cajoled into giving her time.  Events
would decide the rest.
"All I ask of you is to wait," she pleaded earnestly, vehemently.  "Give
me time to find some way of introducing you to friends, and through them
to uncle and aunt--then I can begin seeming to encourage you, and feel
my way----"
He burst into a derisive laugh.
"Rats!" he cried brutally.  "That sort of thing won’t do for me, my dear
wife, I can tell you!  I see you are as big a baby as ever--you need
some one badly to teach you your way about!  No, no!  I want you at
once--who and what’s to prevent me from taking possession of my lawful
property? There is only one thing for us to do: to bolt together--and to
leave them completely in the dark as to your fate.  I hear that those
two old prigs who wouldn’t give bite or sup to your father when he was a
dying man are dead nuts on you.  We must make ’em suffer, my darling!
We must madden them till they are ready to do anything and everything if
they can only find you alive.  And we must talk it over--so that your
disappearance may be a regular thunderbolt! Can you come to my lodgings
to-morrow evening?  I want you to myself--it’s natural, isn’t it?  This
road, quiet as it is, is hardly the place for husband and wife to meet,
is it?  What?  You can’t come?"  His voice hoarsened--he clutched her
arm so fiercely that she gave a faint cry.  "You don’t want me?" he
exclaimed, in tones which to her strained ears seemed those of deadly
menace. "If you don’t--I know you, you see!  I have not forgotten your
kisses, if you have mine--it means another man!  And if it does, I will
have no mercy on you, do you understand?  None!"
"How dare you?"  Once more she faced him, this time in an access of
desperation. "How dare you accuse me of crime?  My coldness, my absolute
refusal to listen to any man is so well known that it has been common
talk in society!  More than once I have felt that uncle has suspected
me--and, indeed, he has sounded me----"
In her earnestness she was off guard, and drawing her to him, he
suddenly threw his arms about her neck and kissed her lips--a long,
violent, almost savage kiss.
"There--go home and think of that!" he said, with a triumphant chuckle,
as she staggered away and almost fell against the fence.  "And take this
address.  I shall be here every evening at the same hour.  And if you
don’t come--well, you had better come, that’s all!  I am not in a very
patient humour."
She made her way out of the Park at his side, dazed, trembling.  When at
last he consented to leave her, and hailing a hansom, she clambered in,