As it passed him, the face of a woman appeared at the window—the face of Madam Guiscardini thus coming before him like an apparition for the second time this night.
Her face looked like some beautiful pictured head painted on a dark background. She did not see him, but spoke to the coachman, apparently giving him some new direction. Glancing forth like a vision, she as rapidly vanished again, and in a moment the brougham had swept off down one of the side streets.
Paul Desfrayne struck his hands together with a gesture of despair.
“She seems to haunt me to-night like some evil spirit,” he muttered. “I did not know she was in London. Her face fills me with affright and a sense of coming danger. Can it be true that I once fancied I loved this woman, and that I let her crush my life forevermore with her cold, pitiless hand? Can it be that I am her bond-slave—no longer free to do more than move in the one dull round day by day, with these galling shackles about me, forced to relinquish all the bright hopes of love and happiness that bring sunshine about other men? Oh! fool, fool, fool that I have been!” he cried, aloud.
Then he once more quickened his steps, as if to escape from himself.
CHAPTER VII.
AN UNINTENTIONAL CUT.
Mrs. Desfrayne then went up-stairs unattended—an arrangement not at all to her liking, for she would fain still retain all the airs and customs of a beauty yet in the heyday of sunshiny existence.
She swept one searching glance round the suite of crowded rooms, seeking the unwelcome figure of Lois Turquand.
It was the work of some minutes discovering Lois. The young girl stood a little apart from the throng, her graceful head slightly bent as she listened to the earnest words of a stately dowager, who was probably congratulating her upon her change of fortune.