Mistress and maid carried out their plan without hindrance. Sir Thomas teased his niece a little slily about the sudden fancy for waxworks--he had, like Julie, some arrière-pensée not unconnected with Vansittart--but he made no objection to the expedition. Nor did Lady Thorne, to whom, after his talk with Vansittart, he had said, after giving her some broad hints--"my dear, understand this once and for all--if we give Joan her head, and don't interfere in the least, she will be the Viscountess Vansittart before we know where we are!" Shortly after Joan had had a solitary tea-dinner in her sitting-room upstairs--a meal she affected when she preferred not to accompany Sir Thomas and Lady Thorne to a long, dreary, dinner-party of old fogies--mistress and maid started off in a four-wheeled cab to which a man-servant pompously gave the address--"Madame Tussord's."
Julie had admired, with a French girl's admiration, her young lady's savoir faire, when she had suggested that they should actually make a tour of the exhibition and take an opportunity of slipping quietly out when others likely to absorb the door-keeper's attention were coming in, and had readily acquiesced in the idea.
They alighted at the entrance, paid their money, walked leisurely in, strolled about, apparently examining the effigies with interest then steering unostentatiously towards the door by which they had entered; they waited until a number of lively children were flocking obstreperously upstairs and had to be held in check at the turnstile, when they issued forth, and walked along the Marylebone Road.
When they came to a church, Joan stopped. "Will you remember this place?" she asked. "You are sure? Then I will leave you here, and meet you again at the exact spot at eleven o'clock. If you are here first, wait until I come. On no account are you to go home alone--without me! Do you understand?"
Julie's protestations that she understood were sincere and hearty. Joan said no more, but took the bag from her--Julie had mentally commented upon its weight, and wondered who was the lucky person to be benefited by its contents--and with an easy "au revoir, then," was gone.
She sped along the street as much in the shadow as she could, lest a glance of recognition might by any possibility be cast upon her from any of the carriages which drove by almost in numbers, for it was the climax of an unusually gay London season. Then, when she began to meet crawling cabs and hansoms, she hailed one, gave the order, "Westminster Bridge--the Southwark end," and sank back in the corner a little spent and exhausted by the first part of her escapade.
"So far, so good," she told herself, drawing a long breath of mingled anxiety and disgust. Although she had steadily pulled herself together, willed resolutely to go through the tragic farce with Victor Mercier, as her only alternative--her loathing of the part she had to play was so intense that at times she felt tempted to take a leap into the black waters of the great river instead of submitting to his endearments. As the cab drove briskly towards Westminster, and her eyes rested miserably on the familiar landmarks of the great city, so beautiful in its nightly robe of the mingled light and darkness which is so typical of its very soul--she said to herself in a wild moment--"death or Vansittart--which?" and the memory of her beloved one's fine frank face, glorified into absolute beauty by the strong tenderness of his deep love--won.
"Even Victor's touch--his kiss," she grimly told herself, "are not too much to pay for a lifetime with him!"
A clock informed her that it was considerably past nine o'clock. So much the better! The shorter that hated tête-à-tête with Mercier would be, the more thankful she would feel.
The air blowing freshly down stream as they crossed the bridge, revived her. She alighted, paid the cabman, and taking her bag tightly in her hand, passed some roughs who were shouting noisily as they came along, by stepping into the road; then seeing the helmet and tunic of a policeman silhouetted against the sky--still dully red after the sunset--she went across the road to him.