Her marriage with Vansittart would be a bigamous one.
"Oh! Surely that was not a real marriage--that short ceremony at the registrar's," she told herself in anguish. "At all events, my uncle will make it worth Victor's while to undo it--never to take any steps to assert that he has any claim upon us. Uncle will manage it. He will have had his will--I shall be Lady Vansittart--he will be ready to do anything, proud man that he is, to prevent a family disgrace!"
It was a mean way of emancipating herself--to run away with Vansittart, deceiving him as to the reason of her strange desire for what was practically an elopement--to leave Sir Thomas Thorne recipient of her confession that Victor Mercier was legally her husband, and must be bribed to ignore the fact!
"But--if I cannot extricate myself in one way, I am driven to use whatever means remain," she sadly told herself. "I wish I had not got to tell lies all round! But if I must, I must!"
Every day she proposed to herself some plan of "managing" Victor Mercier, so as to keep him quiet. She hardly liked that silence of his. Although she had no idea that he had instituted inquiries, and was enlightened as to her intimacy with Vansittart, she felt as if that cessation of hostilities on his part was the calm before the storm.
Her brief encouragement was past and gone. She spent hours of silent anguish, pacing her room, cold drops upon her brow, her nervous hands wringing her gossamer handkerchiefs to shreds. Julie, finding them in wisps when she sorted the linen, wondered.
Then came the day before the date upon which she was to meet Victor, "with all prepared according to his wishes." There was an afternoon fête at the riverside residence of the Marchioness of C----. Sir Thomas was to drive her down, together with Lady Thorne and some friends. Joan had expected that her uncle would propose that Vansittart should make one of the party. She knew nothing of a brief but crucial interview which had taken place between her uncle and her lover, almost immediately after their mutual understanding.
Lord Vansittart's honour demanded that, while respecting the confidence of his future wife, and acceding with entire self-abandonment to her wishes in regard to their matrimonial affairs, he should at least defer in some way to her guardian in loco parentis. So he sought a tête-à-tête with his future uncle-in-law--he contrived to put himself in his way at the club.
It was the ordinary luncheon hour, and, after beguiling him into the empty reading-room, he began without much preface.
"I think you know--at least, I mean, I know you are aware, that I love your niece," he said. "You also know she rejected me--more than once."