He caught a glitter of steel as she thrust something back under the pillow, that she had half withdrawn.
“Tab!” She sat up in bed. “Why, Tab, what is wrong?”
The candlestick was shaking in his hand, and he put it down on the table.
“What is wrong, dear?” she asked.
He could not answer; falling to his knees by the bedside, he trembled his relief into the crook of his arm.
XXXVII
Rex Lander was smiling as he drove through the rain, for it seemed to him that a great trouble had passed from his mind. The solution of all his difficulties had appeared miraculously. He did not hurry, the end was sure now and the woman who had completely occupied his mind for four years, whose portraits by the hundred he had secretly treasured, whose face he had watched, to whose voice he had listened night after night, until she had become an obsession that excluded all other thoughts and fancies, was his!
He had hated his sometime friend since the day Tab had made mock of his adoration. He had loathed him when the incredible fact had been proved beyond doubting, that Tab had stolen into the girl’s heart, and had won her in his absence.
He never doubted that with his great wealth, Ursula Ardfern was his wife for the asking. He had planned his life on this supposition. Wealth! The possession of great power, the ability to bestow upon the object of his choice all that human vanity or human weakness could desire.
Tab was dead now, he thought complacently, and his confession was ashes. He regretted the impulse which had made him write. He had had no intention of doing that when he brought Tab to Mayfield, and he was rather puzzled at his own stupidity. It was a mad thing to do. Mad? He frowned. He was not mad. It was very sane to desire a woman of Ursula Ardfern’s grace and beauty. It was sane enough to want money and to go to extremes to obtain what he wanted. Throughout all the ages men had killed others that their position might be enhanced. They were not madmen. And he was not mad. He had a definite plan, and madmen do not have definite plans.