“Yes,” she replied heavily, “I know. I will take enough—but not too much.”
For a moment there was deep silence between them in that dark room. Then suddenly the great moon appeared again above the clouds, revealing their living faces to each other for the last time. That of the woman was tragic and dreadful; already death seemed to stare from her wide eyes, and that of the man somewhat frightened, yet remorseless. He was not one of those who recoil from their Rubicon.
“Good-bye,” he said quickly; “I am going down to Devene by the late train, but I shall be back in town to-morrow morning—to see my lawyer.”
With a white and ghost-like arm she pointed first to the door, then through the window-place upwards towards the ominous, brooding sky, and spoke in a solemn whisper:
“George,” she said, “you know that you are a hundred times worse than I, and whatever I am, you have made me, who first forced me to marry you because I was beautiful, and then when you wearied of me, treated me as you have done for years. God judge between us, for I say that as you have had no pity, so you shall find none. It is not I who speak to you from the brink of my grave, but something within me.”
It was morning, and Rupert Ullershaw stood at the door of the Portland Place house, whither he had come to call upon Lady Devene, to whom he brought a birthday gift which he had saved for months to buy. He was a somewhat rugged-faced lad, with frank grey eyes; finely built also, broad-shouldered, long-armed, athletic, though in movement slow and deliberate. There was trouble in those eyes of his, who already had found out thus early in his youth that though “bread of deceit is sweet to a man, afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.” Also, he had other anxieties who was the only son and hope of his widowed mother, and of a father, Captain Ullershaw, Devene’s relation, whose conduct had broken her heart and beggared her of the great fortune for which she had been married. Now Rupert, the son, had just passed out of Woolwich, where, when his feet fell into this bitter snare, he had been studying in the hope of making a career for himself in the army.
Presently the butler, a dark, melancholy-looking person, opened the door, and Rupert saw at once that the man was strangely disturbed; indeed, he looked as though he had been crying.
“Is Lady Devene in?” Rupert asked as a matter of form.
“In, sir, yes; she’ll never go out no more, except once,” answered the butler, speaking with a gulp in his throat. “Haven’t you heard, sir, haven’t you heard?” he went on wildly.
“Heard what?” gasped Rupert, catching at the door frame.