He had certainly personated me. Had he borrowed, not only my frock coat, and trousers, but also my name for the ceremony? If he had, and if Lurana was, as she could hardly help being, aware of the fact, it did not require much acquaintance with the law to know that there was a chance, at all events, of getting the Court to declare the marriage null and void.
But he might have been married in his own name; I could not tell, owing to the indistinctness of Mr Skipworth's utterance, only Lurana or those in their immediate neighbourhood could say. I must know that first; I must examine the register, if there was one, and then, if—if Lurana wished to be saved, I might be able to save her.
I knew that a sort of wedding high-tea had been prepared at Canonbury Square, where the whole party would be assembled by this time, and I hurried back to Canonbury Square as fast as the tramcar would take me. My blood was roused; she would not be Niono's if I could prevent it. I would snatch her from him, even if I had to do so across the wedding-cake!
But when I reached the well-known door and raised the familiar knocker—a fist clutching a cast-iron wreath—in my trembling fingers, there were no sounds of festivity within; the house was dark and deserted.
I waited in the bitter January air; the street lamp opposite—the identical one under which Lurana had first agreed to marry me—flickered at every gust of the night wind, as though troubled on my account. They must have transferred the feast to the Circus, or to some adjacent restaurant; evidently there was no one there.
I was just turning hopelessly away, when I heard the bolt being withdrawn, and the door was opened by a maid.
"Where is your mistress?" I asked breathlessly. I could not bring myself to ask for Lurana as Mrs Onion.
"In the drawing-room, upstairs," was the unexpected reply, "with the 'istericks."
So long as she was not with Niono, I cared little; I bounded up, and found her alone.
As I entered, she raised her flushed, tear-stained face from the shabby sofa on which she had thrown herself. "Go away!" she cried, "why do you come near me now? You have no right—do you hear?—no right!"