Her hands and neck blazed with gems, but her eyes would have made you forget the jewels, so intensely they gleamed. The finger of feverishness had touched her dusky cheeks to a rare flush. Waiting there in the soft light of a single lamp of the cluster in the ceiling, Carlotta Lancaster had never looked so splendid. And she had never felt so afraid.
Afraid of what? Ruin for her husband, misery for her daughter? Oh, dear, no! Afraid of being herself caught in a most dishonourable and traitorous act? A little, perhaps. But the fear that now made her shiver and burn was the fear lest Bullard should fail in his latest and last, as he had said it should be, plan to obtain the diamonds. Failure on his part spelled ruin for her—not just social ruin, though that were terrible enough, but financial ruin, hideous, complete.
Debts, debts, debts! The night before leaving London, and for the first time in her life there, she had sat down with paper and pencil and made up a statement—rough, of course—of all she owed, and added it up…. Appalling! Thousands and thousands of pounds! Why, great Heavens! if she used her recent windfall to pay her debts, she would have nothing left worth mentioning. And Bullard was going to give her a hundred thousand—if—if … Oh, but he must not fail! It was her final chance, her final hope, of averting downfall into sordid obscurity.
An hour ago another hope had glimmered, but briefly.
"Doris," she said, "you seem happy here. Will you give me a straight answer to a straight question? Suppose your father's affairs came right; suppose, also, I gave you back that money; would you—would you marry Alan Craig?"
But Doris, who had made a discovery since coming to Grey House, answered shortly yet cheerfully—
"No!"
Mrs. Lancaster did not press the matter. She was too well aware that the twenty-five thousand pounds had been the price of the remnants of her daughter's faith in her. Doris had ceased to call her "mother" except in company, and then as seldom as possible; in times of unavoidable privacy she treated her with extreme but distant courtesy.
So the glimmer had gone out, and now there was no way of salvation but
Bullard's way.
The silver carriage-clock on the mantel tingled eight. Mrs. Lancaster rose and went to the door, which she opened an inch. Awhile she listened intently, then closed it and turned the key. She had heard nothing. Twenty minutes earlier she had heard Caw moving about the study, mending the fire and putting things in order; then he had gone downstairs—to his supper, she presumed. He would not likely be up again within the next two hours—unless she summoned him. With another shudder she moved away from the door.