What doom? Public shame and the hangman? Or the utter loss of Vansittart's love? One seemed as terrible a retribution as the other.
"But--do I deserve such an awful punishment for what was done in ignorance, my fancying myself in love with Victor, and being talked into marrying him at the registrar's?" she asked herself, with sudden fierce rebellion against fate. "Do I even deserve it for drugging him to take possession of my letters? What had he not threatened me with? And I never meant to kill him! I am sure I would rather have died than that!"
Again, a passionate instinct of self-defence as well as of self-preservation came to her rescue. As she lay there among the shadows in the silent night, with no sound but the distant rumble of belated vehicles, and the measured footsteps of the policeman as he went his round upon the pavements below breaking the stillness, she determined, once and for all, to kill the past.
"It shall be dead!" she told herself, sternly. "I will have no more of it! If any one or anything belonging to it crops up, I will defy, deny, ignore, resist to the death! No one saw me--no one can really hurt me! I have had enough of misery and wretchedness--I will--yes, I will--be happy--and no one in the world shall prevent me!"
CHAPTER XXIX
The morning after the Duchess of Arran's ball Lord Vansittart was seated at his breakfast, the Times propped up in front of him, when a ring of the hall-door bell was followed by a man-servant's entrance with a telegram.
Since his engagement to Joan, he had been singularly nervous--her changeful moods were hardly calculated to soothe a lover! He regarded the buff-coloured envelope askance.
Still his tone was cheerful as he said. "No answer." The message was from Joan; but there was nothing alarming in it. The few words were merely "Come as early as you can."
In a very few minutes after its delivery at his house, he had given his brief orders to the household for the day, had carelessly said he did not know when he should return, or if he would be home before night except, perhaps, to dress--and without waiting for a conveyance of his own--there would be delay if he sent down to the stables--he was out, striding along the pavement until he met a hansom, which he chartered with promise of an extra tip for quick driving.
"Miss Thorne is in her boudoir, my lord," said the porter, when he alighted at the house. Evidently the order had been given to that effect. The groom of the chambers bowed respectfully, but was easily waved aside. Vansittart crossed the hall and sprang up the stairs as only one of the family might do without disregard of the convenances.