She stopped short, gazing curiously at Joan's drawn, ashen features, features like those of an expressionless corpse. Her eyes, too, were dull, wandering.
"Escape?" she said, stupidly. Then she dropped into a chair, feeling half dead, half paralyzed. The thunder rolled faintly in the distance. It seemed to her that she was still seated in the boat, rowing, rowing, and was dreaming this wretched misery.
"Yes, escape!" the other repeated, bitterly. "You must confess everything to your husband--mind! everything! Then, perhaps, as I, whom you have injured for life, have had mercy on you, he may! At all events, he may do something to save your neck. You have but a few hours' safety--"
She started and stopped short. The door was flung open, and Vansittart entered, briskly, eagerly. He looked from one to the other, then went up to Joan, and reverentially lifting her hand, kissed it.
"Who is this lady, dearest?" he asked, gazing steadfastly at Vera.
CHAPTER XXXV
"I am Vera Anerley," said the pale girl, speaking in clear tones of deadly meaning. "I have come to tell your wife that the case against her is complete; that she may be arrested at any moment for the murder of Victor Mercier!"
Joan gave a faint cry, and buried her wet, dishevelled head in Vansittart's coat-sleeve.
"Hush, darling, I am here!" he tenderly said. Then, supporting Joan's fainting form, which was already a dead weight, he looked with cool scorn, with stern defiance, at the slender, black-clad figure, at the white, miserable face with those menacing eyes.
"Case, indeed," he exclaimed with scathing contempt. "A jealous woman's vengeance, you should say! But your miserable plot to destroy my injured wife, woman, will succeed in injuring no one but yourself. I have this morning learnt every detail of the trumped-up charge, and given my instructions for the defence. If, indeed, the affair will go any further after my deposition on oath that on the night that--man--died--my future wife was with me until she met her maid to return home. And now, since you have succeeded in making Lady Vansittart ill, I must ask you to quit the house--I will have you driven to the station, if you like--"