Amaryllis' lips were trembling; the shock and then this counter shock were unhinging her. She was horrified at herself that she should not catch at every straw to prove John was alive, instead of feeling some sense of relief when Verisschenzko protested that the postcard was a forgery.
Poor John! Good, and kind, and unselfish. It was all too agitating. But was just life such a very great thing? She knew that had she the choice she would rather be dead than separated now from Denzil. And if John were really to be alive—what misery he would be obliged to suffer, knowing the situation.
"Quite apart from what to me is a convincing proof, the scent," Verisschenzko went on, "the card must be a forgery because of John's seeming oblivion of the possibility that you two might have already carried out his wishes. All this would have been very unlike him. But if it is, as I think, Ferdinand's and Harietta Boleski's work, they would not be likely to know that John had desired that Denzil should marry you, Amaryllis, and so would have thought a short card with longings to see you would be a natural thing to write. Indeed you can be at rest. And now I will go and dress for dinner, and we will forget disturbing thoughts."
Amaryllis and Denzil will always remember Stépan's wonderful tact and goodness to them that evening; he kept everything calm and thrilled them all with his stories and his conversation and his own wonderfully magnetic personality. And after dinner he played to them in the green drawing room and, as Mrs. Ardayre said, seemed to bring peace and healing to all their troubled souls.
But when he was alone with Denzil late, after the two women had retired to bed, he sunk into a deep chair in the smoking room and suddenly burst into a peal of cynical laughter.
"What the devil's up?" demanded Denzil, astonished.
"I am thinking of Harietta's exquisite mistake. She believes the baby is mine! She is mad with a goat's jealousy; she supposes it is I who will marry Amaryllis—hence her plot! Does it not show how the good are protected and the evil fall into their own traps!"
"Of course! She was in love with you!"
"In love! Mon Dieu! you call that love! I mastered her body and was unobtainable. She was never able to draw me more than a person could to whom I should pay two hundred francs. She knew that perfectly—it enraged her always. The threads are now completely in my hands. Conceive of it, Denzil! The man at the Ardayre ball was her first husband for whom she always retained some kind of animal affection—because he used to beat her. They married her to Stanislass just to obtain the secrets of Poland, and any other thing which she could pick' up. Her marvellous stupidity and incredible want of all moral restraint has made her the most brilliant spy. No principles to hamper her—nothing. She has only tripped up through jealousy now. When she felt that she had lost me she grew to desire me with the only part of her nature with which she desires anything, her flesh—then she became unbalanced, and in September before I left, gave the clue into my hands. I shall not bore you with all the details, but I have them both—she and Ferdinand Ardayre. The first husband has gone back to Germany from Sweden, but we shall secure him, too, presently. Meanwhile I shall hand Harietta to the French authorities—her last exploits are against France. She has enabled the Germans to shoot six or seven brave fellows, besides giving information of the most important kind wormed from foolish elderly adorers and above all from Stanislass himself."
"She will be shot, I suppose."