He made a step or two towards the door, she retreating before him. And when he had almost reached it, she fell suddenly upon her knees, and flung her arms round him with desperate energy.
"Stewart," she said, in a whisper indeed, yet in a voice to be heard amid a whirlwind, "my husband, my love, my life, my darling, don't mind me! Leave me here; it will be safer, better, less suspicious. Go away, and leave me. I don't care, indeed. I don't want to go with you. Go alone, and make sure of your safety! Stewart, say you'll go--say you'll go!"
While she was speaking, he was striving to loosen her hold upon him, but in vain. A short brief warfare was waged in that moment in his soul. If he softened to her now, if he yielded to her now, all was undone. And yet what love was this--what strange, and wondrous, and potent kind of love was this? Not the kind of love which had looked at him, an hour or two ago, out of the rich black eyes of the American widow, that had trembled in the tones of her voice. But a vision of the beauty he coveted, of the wealth he needed, of the freedom he panted for, rose before Routh's bewildered brain, and the strife ended. Evil had its own way unchecked henceforth to the end.
He raised his right arm and struck her heavily upon the face; the clasp of her hands gave way, and she sank upon the floor. Then he stepped over her, as she lay prostrate in the doorway, and left the room. When she raised herself, she pushed back her hair, and looked round with a dreary amazement upon her troubled face, and she heard the key turned in his dressing-room door.
The day had dawned when Harriet Routh went gently upstairs to her bed-room. She was perfectly calm. She opened the window-shutters and let the light in before she lay down on her bed. Also, she unlocked a box, which she took from her wardrobe, and looked carefully into it, then put it away satisfied. As she closed her eyes, she said, half aloud, "I can do no more; but she can save him, and she shall."
At one o'clock on the following day, Harriet Routh, attired, as usual, in simple but ladylike dress, and presenting an appearance on which the most impertinent of pages would not have dared to cast an imputation, presented herself at No. 4 Hollington-square, Brompton. Mrs. Bembridge lived there, but Mrs. Bembridge was not at home, and would not be at home until late in the evening. Would the lady leave her name? 'No; but she desired Mrs. Bembridge might be informed that a lady had called, and would call again at the same hour on the morrow, who had found an article of dress lost at Homburg by Mrs. Bembridge, and which she would restore to Mrs. Bembridge in person, but not otherwise.
As Harriet was returning home, she walked down Piccadilly, and saw Mr. Felton and George Dallas alighting from a cab at the door of the house in which their lodgings had been engaged.
"Very fair, too," said Mrs. Ireton P. Bembridge, when she received Harriet's message from her maid, "and very natural she should expect a reward. Ladies often take advantage of that kind of thing to give money to the poor. I shan't grudge her any thing she may ask in reason, I shall be so glad to get back my golden egg."