Of Mr. Wallace Armstrong the elder's rough brutality Clare herself could bear personal evidence. Curiosity had led her on the occasion of her visit to Alexander Wallace's house to peer into the room on the top floor adjoining the studio; and she would not easily forget the momentary vision she had had of a man's face, red and swollen by drink and fury, which appeared at the doorway, or the violence with which, to an accompaniment of curses, she had been thrust from the room. The incident at the time had been inexplicable to her, although with characteristic mendacity she had made use of it to endeavour to prejudice Laline against the younger Armstrong. But as soon as she learned of the existence of the scapegrace cousin, recently released from gaol, who was forbidden his uncle's house and only frequented it by stealth, she judged rightly that it was he whom she had seen upon the evening in question.
She was far too spiteful to communicate her intelligence to Laline, and thoroughly enjoyed the latter's evident distress when she was led to believe that the man charged with repeated drunkenness and assault was her lover. Clare knew quite well that only a few words would suffice to remove this misconception from Laline's mind, and that she must therefore devise some new plan by which to revenge herself upon her. Understanding as she did to some extent the other girl's sensitive and impressionable nature, she decided that the coarse insults of a half-insane drunkard, who was the near relation of her affianced husband, would be infinitely painful to Laline, and that a visit paid by his disreputable cousin to his lady-love would deeply distress the younger Armstrong.
With this conviction, Clare had sat down on the preceding evening and indited the following letter, in a disguised handwriting, to the elder Wallace, whose address she had learned from her friends.
"Sir—I have never met you, but I have heard of you, and how you, the elder and the legal heir, have been cruelly and unjustly supplanted in your uncle's heart and your uncle's home—which last should certainly be yours—by the cunning tricks of your younger cousin. Although a stranger, I have a fellow-feeling for you, as I too have had my rightful place in the affections of my relations usurped by an interloper. It is only fair that you should know that your cousin is now engaged to be married to a lady who has never even heard of your existence, and who is marrying him for your uncle's money, to which she believes him to be heir. In justice to yourself and to her, can you not see her and tell her the truth? She resides with Mrs. Vandeleur, the celebrated palmist, at 21, St. Mary's Crescent, Kensington. If you call, you might pretend to consult her.
"A Well-Wisher."
Instead of the tipsy maniac she had confidently expected, this letter had produced a man of sardonic humour and rough and unpleasant manners, but undeniably sane and passably sober—a man, too, of strikingly handsome appearance, however marred by an ill-regulated life; and Clare, wholly ignorant of the deadly blow struck at Laline's happiness by his very existence, felt that her shot had missed fire.
Tea was brought in at this point and refused with some disdain by the visitor. With a sickening pang of remembrance, Laline recalled the fact that at Boulogne Wallace had never partaken of tea.
"Liquids that didn't intoxicate weren't worth swallowing," he had declared; and as a child she had been shocked and startled by such a statement until he had managed to convince her that he was joking. How could she have been so blind, so foolish, as to suppose that such a man as this could develop into the Wallace Armstrong she had grown to love? This creature before her was but the man of four years ago, with all his evil habits, his roughness of manners, his scorn for his fellow-creatures, his cynicism, and his degraded tastes intensified; and a shudder ran through her at the thought that, but for her flight on her wedding-day, she would be even now his property, his chattel, dragged down in all possibility to his level.
"Not that! I should be dead!" was the cry that rose within her heart at the thought.
And yet she was his wife! Those few words spoken before the English Consul by a reckless adventurer and an ignorant child had made her his for life, even though he ignored her existence, even though she had given her heart and her word to another.
A shudder ran through her at the thought, and involuntarily her dark eyes turned upon him again with a look in which hate and fear were mingled. Meeting his gaze, she quickly averted her own; but that second look had the effect of completely sobering Wallace.