With a throb of mad hope she seized the lid and looked outside for the direction. Then she stood looking at that, as still and almost as white as stone, for the hamper was directed in a different handwriting to “Miss Muriel West, Victoria Street.” She was still standing by it when a little moan she uttered unconsciously brought Stephen from the next room. He started, and grew in an instant as white as she when he saw her.
“Stephen, I did not mean to frighten you. What I came to ask you I have found out already—here;” and she glanced at her husband’s card.
But the cripple began to tremble from head to foot, and to stammer out that it was the wrong address, that Harry was no longer there, that no letter sent there would reach him.
“Tell me his right address then,” said Annie, recovering her calmness. “It is of no use to try to keep it from me any longer, for I will find him out, and I will stand face to face with him before another week is over!”
“But you must not, Annie,” declared the cripple, his forehead damp with agitation. “He will not see you; he will threaten you, abuse you. If you attempt to force yourself upon him against his will, I will not answer for the consequences.”
“I can face the consequences,” said Annie, quietly. “I can suffer anything but being cheated, and deceived, and tricked, as I have been by both of you. I shall find out where Kirby Park is, and go there without delay.”
“You will not see him there. He was there; but he is gone, and they cannot tell you where.”
“Very well. Then I shall find out where he is from Muriel West.”
“Go to her then—go to her; ask her, if you can stoop so low, where the flowers come from that deck her rooms—that lie in her hair. And, when you are satisfied, find out your husband, if your pride does not hold you back, and enjoy the welcome he will give you.”
In the midst of her own distress Annie feared for the effect of the strong excitement under which he was laboring upon the fragile frame of the cripple, and, without any further answer to his taunts, or any more reproaches for his double-dealing, she wished him good-bye very gravely, and, taking the card from among the leaves before he could stop her, she left the room as he was struggling to reach the door to prevent her exit. It seemed a horrible thing to leave him alone, cripple that he was, in a state of such utter bodily prostration as this scene had reduced him to; but she knew that he would accept no help from her hands, and she went down the narrow dark stairs sadly and slowly, listening as she went, lest she should hear him fall. But she heard no sound from the room up-stairs, and, as she left the house and walked toward home, her thoughts turned from the miserable instrument of her husband’s treachery to Harry himself, with all her newly awakened love changed to a passionate wish for vengeance upon him for this cruel deceit.