Wallace Armstrong, for his part, coming into the dark room, could distinguish little but a tall, slender woman's figure in long white draperies, a figure that neither moved nor spoke when the servant announced him, but stood more like a wraith than a living thing between him and the light. Was it a trick of the celebrated Mrs. Vandeleur, he wondered, to receive strangers in this way? It was certainly original and striking, if hardly calculated to set visitors at their ease.
"Is it Mrs. Vandeleur?" he asked. "I am afraid you dropped something as I came in. May I find it for you?"
As he bent his head Laline looked down upon it, and remembered, with a little quiver of repulsion, how often at the Rue Planché she had noticed his thick curly black hair.
"Here it is!" he exclaimed, at that moment. "A crystal ball. It isn't broken or even chipped. Is it a magic crystal, like the one Rossetti wrote about?"
Still she did not answer, and found, to her horror, that he was looking at her in surprise. Raising her eyes to his in a sudden defiant impulse, she realised at once that Wallace had changed almost as much as she herself had done. For one thing, the heavy dark moustache, which four years ago had shaded his mouth, was close shaved; he wore his hair much shorter than before, and the look of brooding sullenness was gone from his brow. He was now to all appearance as perfectly "in condition," physically and mentally, as before at Boulogne he had been neglected and "run down." Under straight black eyebrows his brilliant blue eyes glanced in searching interested fashion upon the face of the still figure before him; but the old haggard insolence, the old defiance and distrust, seemed to have entirely disappeared from his voice, face, and bearing, and before she had even opened her lips to speak to him, Laline felt that the horror and the hatred of years had already begun to melt away within her heart.
"I hope you will forgive me, Mrs. Vandeleur," the visitor observed, after a short pause, "for my intrusion. But I know so many of your intimate friends very well indeed that I thought I might venture to call, on the strength of the letter from Lady Moreham, which I sent to you by messenger this morning. I hope, by the way, that you received it?"
It was necessary for Laline to speak at last, and in very low tones she informed Mr. Armstrong that Mrs. Vandeleur was out, and that she was her secretary.
Her heart beat so violently as she spoke that it seemed to choke her, and she almost feared that he would hear its throbbing. She had often been told that her speaking voice was one of unusual depth and sweetness, and she dreaded lest he should recognise its tones. But though he inclined his head a little in her direction, the better to catch her murmured words, Mr. Armstrong made no comment upon them, but broke at once into talk upon the different objects of interest about the room.
"May I wait here until Mrs. Vandeleur returns?" he asked; and, when she bowed her head in response, he went on at once with his remarks. "Like a page of old-world romance this room is. One might expect any wonder amid such surroundings. Are you versed in occult lore, may I ask? Miss Cavan, as I understand, admits that it has a kind of terrifying fascination for her."
A light seemed to flash upon Laline. This man, Wallace Armstrong, her husband, was none other than Clare Cavan's rich admirer, to whom she had been introduced on the preceding evening. Why had not some prescience taught her—Laline—who it was that Clare had described as tall and strong, blue-eyed, black-haired, of Highland descent, and next-of-kin to one of the richest men in London!