"Don't," interrupted Leah, who both looked and felt pale. "I won't have it. Let the poor man die in peace. If he dies otherwise, I shall refuse to marry you."
"You may do that in any case," said the doctor grimly. "What hold have I over you?"
"There is no need for you to have any hold," said Lady Jim, wincing, and feeling that she had indeed delivered herself into the power of the enemy. "But if you think I will not keep my promise you are mistaken. I swear to marry you."
"Ah, well," said Demetrius, with a penetrating look. "If you do not marry me, you cannot marry another, since your husband will always be alive."
He spoke with slow significance.
"Oh, you make him out to be immortal also," said she, with an uneasy laugh; then felt the necessity of bringing this interview to a conclusion. "We must part now. It will not do for us to be seen talking together."
"I agree," said Demetrius, gravely; "your proposal alters our relations entirely. In society, I will speak to you little."
Lady Jim nodded, and put her handkerchief to her lips with a feeling of nausea. Now that her scheme was taking shape, its outlines appeared rather repulsive. To read of such a plot conceived and detailed by a dexterous author was amusing and stimulating; to engage in its execution meant worry, and a fearful ignorance as to what might happen, should things go awry. The same difference might be supposed to exist between Aldershot man[oe]uvres and a real battle. Theorising in criminality was easy; practice would be both difficult and dangerous.
Moreover, she might have to pay a very large price for the privilege of engaging in this questionable transaction. Demetrius would certainly exact his bond in genuine Shylock fashion. Needless to say, she had no intention of marrying him, and trusted to the providence of the peacock fetish to avoid the necessity though at the moment she saw no means whereby she could escape fulfilling her promise. This reflection almost made her draw back. As yet, she was not under the doctor's thumb, and could extricate herself even at this eleventh hour by denying everything, should he dare to speak out. But a second thought of her desperate need of money, a sordid vision of cheap hotels and ready-made frocks, a shuddering remembrance that the future, as it now stood, meant limited pocket-money and the everlasting boredom of Jim's society, turned the scale in favour of the venture. "Be bold! Be bold!" said the warning of the door in the old fairy tale, and Leah thought the advice worth taking. But she forgot the concluding words, "Be not too bold!"
"I leave details to you," she said to her companion, when they had concluded their nefarious bargain.