CHAPTER XIX
Myra went to bed, but it was a long time before she could compose herself to woo sleep, so full was her mind of disturbing thoughts, so many problems did she find herself called on to solve.
"Does he love me?" That was the question that she put to herself time and again, and could not answer. "Do I love him?" was another. And at heart she knew that if she were certain that the answer to the first question was in the affirmative, she could answer the second in a like manner.
"What will it profit me if I denounce him?" she soliloquised. "He says he is at my mercy, but he can claim me, and boast that I offered to marry him, even if I do revenge myself by denouncing him. Always he seems to have the advantage of me. To save my 'honour' now, and satisfy Aunt Clarissa, I shall either have to humble myself to ask him to marry me publicly, or else forgive Tony. Either course is repugnant."
She fell asleep at last, but was wrestling with her problem even in her jumbled dreams. She woke with a start, and with the impression strong upon her that someone or something had touched her face and her breast. Scared, she groped for the electric switch and flashed on the light above the bed, and as she did so she remembered having awakened months previously at Auchinleven just in the same sort of fright, to find Don Carlos's note on her pillow.
Some odd instinct or intuition told her that history had repeated itself, and it came hardly as a surprise to find a half-sheet of notepaper tucked into her nightdress close to her heart. With fingers that trembled slightly, Myra unfolded the note and read:
"Give me your heart and love, my wife, and I will devote my life to you. If you have no love, show no mercy."
Myra read the words again and again, sorely puzzled to decide what exactly they meant, wondering, incidentally, why Don Carlos had not awakened her to whisper what he had to say instead of leaving a note on her breast.
"Is he ashamed or afraid?" she asked herself—and could not answer her own question, nor a score of other questions which she put to herself as she tossed about restlessly for the remainder of the night, unable to sleep.
Her aunt, in dressing-gown and slippers, came to her room while she was sipping her early morning cup of tea.