"Very," she returned mechanically, making a pretence of appreciation. The blue flowers were forget-me-nots. To her strung-up imagination they looked like innocent child-eyes gazing at her with reproach. Once she and Victor had sat by a stream, and she had picked some from the bank and fastened them in his coat--he always liked a "button-hole"--Bah! These horrible thoughts!--What was her uncle saying? "He said he thought you looking ill. He wondered I had not sent to the doctor before."
"He--who?" asked Joan, sharply. "Lord Vansittart? What has he got to do with it?"
"There! You are going to faint," exclaimed her uncle, alarmed and annoyed, as she paled to lividity, sank back in her chair, and thrust the basket into his hands. Oh, the irony of fate! She had seen the exact counterpart among the flowers of the thick, small-petalled white blossom in Victor Mercier's coat that terrible last night--when she poisoned him. The perfume recalled it all--the waxen, deathly face, the still, silent form--the little room with the open window.
"It is the scent--it makes me feel faint when I am well, the odour of daphne, or tuberose, or whatever it is!" she stammered, forcing herself to speak with a gigantic effort. "And when one has a headache like mine it is worse."
"I will put them outside," said he, consolingly. She watched him as he did so, clumsily trying to tread softly as he went to the door. Poor, kind uncle! If he knew--if he knew!
"Do you know," he began, scanning her livid features with solicitude as he returned, and resuming his seat, pitched his voice in a low undertone, which only succeeded in producing a hoarse croak, so unlike his own cheery voice that in her hysterical, strained state she barely repressed a shriek of agonized laughter. "I am almost sure, indeed, I may say I feel convinced, that this headache of yours is a nervous attack brought on by seeing those waxworks last night. I am sure you went into the 'Chamber of Horrors,' and looked at the murderers. I did when I was about your age, and it got on my nerves. My opinion is, that that making effigies of terrible criminals who have dared to take their fellow-creatures' lives, and exhibiting them for money, is wrong, and ought to be forbidden. The law is right when it orders such human monsters to be buried within the prison, and their bodies consumed with quicklime. They ought not to be remembered! Every trace of their awful crimes ought to be instantly obliterated--ah! I thought as much! You shudder at the very recollection of those wicked faces! A delicate, innocent young girl like you ought not to go to such places! What? You did not go into the 'Chamber of Horrors?'"
"I don't think so," stammered Joan faintly, closing her eyes, and wondering how long this crucifixion of her soul would last. All her life? "But--what do you mean--the bodies consumed by quicklime? In the prison?"
"Never mind, we won't talk of such things!" said he, cheerfully. "Oh--poor little cold hand!" He was startled by the deathly icy touch of the hand he had taken between his warm palms. "Ah! There is your aunt! Come in, my dear! I was just telling Joan that I shall insist upon her seeing the doctor----"
"I am sure you will insist upon nothing of the kind, Thomas," said Lady Thorne, entering in her handsome, sober black dinner-dress, redeemed from too great plainness by the diamond pins in the black lace head-dress crowning her iron-grey hair, and the pearl and diamond necklet and brooches around and about her lace-encircled throat, and seeming to bring in a matter-of-fact atmosphere from the outer world of ordinary commonplace, which jarred upon and supported Joan at one and the same time. "Joan has nothing the matter with her but a little neuralgia. She wants a good long sleep, and she will be as well as ever to-morrow morning. You leave her to me, and don't meddle with what you men, however clever you may be, know nothing about!" And Lady Thorne, who remembered her own girlish "attacks" during her love anxieties, and who had no mind for visits from a doctor who might order change of air and nip the engagement with Lord Vansittart in the bud, bustled her husband off, and administered a tonic to her niece in the form of a good-humoured scolding.
"Men always want to make mountains out of mole-hills, doctors too--they are all alike!" she ended by saying, after she had chidden her for not forcing herself to eat and drink. "You did not sleep! Of course not! Well, I promise you you shall to-night!"