"But the people at the inn?"
"They could not see me. They did not know me; and, besides, I felt I could risk all to see you." She pauses. She lifts her beautiful face to his, and suddenly flings herself into his arms. "Oh, Maurice! you are free now—free! Oh! those cursed days when your mother watched and followed me. Now at last I can come to you, and you are free!"
"Free?"
"Yes, yes." She has raised herself again from his unwilling arms, and is gazing at him feverishly. So wild is her mood, so exalted in its own way, that she does not mark the coldness of his mien. "What is that little fool to you? Nothing! A mere shadow in your path!"
"She is my wife," says Rylton steadily.
"And such a wife!" Marian laughs nervously, strangely. "Besides," eagerly, "that might be arranged." She leans towards him. There is something terrible to Rylton in the expression of her eyes, the certainty that lies in them, that he is as eager to rid his life of Tita as she is. "There are acts, words of hers that could be used. On less"—again she goes close to him and presses the fingers of one hand against his breast—"on far less evidence than we could produce many a divorce has been procured."
Rylton's eyes are fixed upon her. A sense of revulsion is sickening him. How her eyes are shining! So might a fiend look; and her fingers—they seem to burn through his breast into his very soul.
"Acts—words—whose acts?" asks he slowly.
"Tita's."
"Lady Rylton's? What do you mean?"