A Woman Martyr

by Alice M. Diehl

Then--it was as if death itself laid a cold hand on her heart--for there was one in the detested writing of Victor Mercier. He had dared--risked--writing to her openly in her own home, under her uncle's roof!

What did it mean?

CHAPTER XIII

The latent sense of being arbiter of a beautiful young woman's fate--which had been perhaps Victor Mercier's only sentiment in Joan's regard during their separation--developed, on that evening they met in the Regent's Park, into a certain passionate exultation in possessing her for his own, evidently against her wish. But when he felt convinced, from Paul Naz' innocent betrayal of society talk, that the girl who was legally his wife had a lover, and that already their names were coupled together, the smouldering resentment that her girlish passion for him was dead, burst into a fierce flame of absolute hatred.

He had enjoyed abandoning himself to the enjoyment of Vera's love with a double zest--because it was a secret revenge upon Joan. He had gone about after he had received Joan's letter postponing their next meeting, making subtle and refined plans for the long-drawn-out punishment of his "faithless wife," as he termed her. He told himself he was glad of a week's interlude. If he had seen her then, he might have betrayed his wrath and desire for revenge. His tactics were quite the opposite of that.

"First, I must compromise her," he decided. "I must have her actions now, at the actual moment, in my power--she must have been alone with me in such a way as to turn this noble lord who wants her against her, should he know of it! Yes--if she had refused to see me, she might have gone in for a divorce! But if I have her condonation for the past on my side, she will have no case--even if she would not have entirely damned herself with this cur of a lover!"

This accomplished--something tangible in the present to hold over her head--he would take her away and make constant and passionate love to her. He told himself grimly that there would be a fantastic delight in this uxorious enjoyment of a wife whose heart was given to another man, which fell to the lot of few. The secret ecstasy would be the knowledge that he had left the loving arms of a devoted girl who was ready to die for him, and could return to them at any moment--for he well knew that Vera's infatuation for him included wholesale acceptance of any lie he chose to invent to account for his absence, or any detail of his life.

"Then--I can play upon them all in turn, as upon a set of musical instruments," he promised himself. "The uncle will do what I ask--snob as he is, parvenu, beggar on horseback!--to hide what he will think disgrace! The lover--well, he shall be neatly disposed of by-and-bye. He shall see me with her in my arms, somehow, somewhere, somewhen! Upon my word, that will be almost as much torture to them both as the old-fashioned, out-of-date revenges. It is a poor revenge upon people to kill them! Let them live--and thwart them, make them writhe in their impotence to do what they want!"

And during this week Vera must be plunged more hopelessly and abjectly in love, so that she would become such a mere echo of himself that she would do, or not do, whatever he suggested, without so much as a second thought.

So he devoted himself to her, and spent his money freely in the process. He bought her pretty trinkets, and some ready-made costumes and becoming hats--and almost every day took her some excursion. They had a day at Brighton, one at Windsor, one in Richmond Park, one up river. That was the day before the one in which the crucial interview with Joan was to occur; and he chose to assume a portentous gravity, and to tell her that he must go away for a time.