With a dry sob in her throat she spoke to Wallace.
"I am your wife," she said, "and I will come to you. Now please go—and leave me quite alone!"
CHAPTER XXX.
Exactly a fortnight later Laline stood for the last time within the little room in which she had slept during her stay in Mrs. Vandeleur's house. Within an hour she would have turned her back on St. Mary's Crescent forever. Now, as she gazed for the last time round the simply-furnished room, it seemed as though she had lived, not a few weeks only, but a whole lifetime within the four walls of the old house in Kensington. Love, joy, and hope, terror, hatred, and dumb despair, were mere names to her until she became an inmate of Mrs. Vandeleur's household, and the first three of these she was leaving behind her as it seemed forever.
She moved mechanically about, putting the finishing touches to her packing. Clare's help she had declined, for Clare's malevolent satisfaction at the turn things had taken was more than Laline could bear. Of Lorin she had seen nothing since that interview which Wallace had interrupted; but she knew that he had left London. Old Mr. Wallace had told her that when he had come to visit her, ready and willing to forgive all Wallace's past lies and deception, and to welcome Wallace's wife with open arms. He had distracted her with questions, and striven hard to induce her to alter her determination to leave England with her husband immediately, but to no purpose.
"I cannot stay in England," she had said; "but, if you can find your nephew an opening abroad, I will go with him, and will do my best to make him happy and to help him to lead a new life amid fresh surroundings."
As to Wallace, he was tired of London, so he declared, and perfectly willing to leave it. Once away from his uncle's and his cousin's eyes, he could dispense with all make-believe of working, and settle down comfortably to spend the liberal allowance which old Alexander would settle upon the wife of his favourite nephew. In a few years' time, so the old man stipulated, the young couple must return—if not for good, at least for a long visit.
"I must have my children about me when I die!" he had pleaded.
And to this Laline had agreed. She would have agreed to anything only to put the sea between her and the man she loved, but of whom she would not even let herself think now.