“I must go, Elaine. Kiss me, darling, for the last time! Oh, the misery of it.”
He embraced her fiercely, saying, hoarsely:
“If you are in trouble at any time call me to your side, Elaine; I shall never be more than two or three days’ journey away. Promise me, my lost love!”
“Yes, I will send to you if my trouble is serious—if our old lawyer cannot combat with it,” she said.
“And your fortune shall be restored to you. I will see Mr. Worboys within two months’ time. That will be soon enough. Between us Rivington can be brought to his knees. In the meantime I shall not be idle, and will drop the lawyer a few lines. You will understand later, Elaine.”
Another frantic, hopeless embrace, and, seizing his hat, he almost ran from the room—there was a bang of the outer door, and he was gone.
As the cab whirled away in obedience to his wild words, “Home again! Lose not a moment!” the figure of a man appeared from behind a mass of evergreens which grew in the shadow of a spreading and leafy maple. It was that of Viscount Rivington.
He took a final glance through the drawing-room window, where Lady Elaine was kneeling, her face buried in the cushions of a lounge, paused irresolute, then glided into the street, a savage imprecation upon his lips, hate in his flashing, black eyes.
“So this is why my love is spurned!” he muttered. “Why my life is to be utterly wrecked! He is her lover still. What unlucky fate has brought them together again? What of the story of his shattered memory? God! Has Margaret deceived me also, or is there a mine beneath her also which is soon to explode? How long has he been visiting here? Had I chanced upon them unawares—but, bah! I saw her in his arms, he a married man! I heard her sobs, and I hate her for it! Now it is my turn to woo, aye, and to win! My Lady Elaine shall be my wife at any cost. I am upon the very brink of disaster, a disaster which will forever place me beyond the pale of decent society. I shall be an outcast—a pariah—a thing to be avoided! I have tried soft measures—tender appeals, declarations of a love which has now turned to gall and wormwood! My lady, you have only yourself to blame, and desperation is my master!”
He looked up and down the street, and continued at a rapid pace to Hyde Park Corner, from whence he took a cab to Charing Cross post office. A telegram was sent to Lady Gaynor, as follows: