“No right to?” he said with scorn. “I know a woman when I see her, and a butterfly when I look at her. Do you think it was a pleasure to me to leave the dying old man, to run the risk of his dying in my absence, in order to bring you to him? But he shall have his last great wish gratified, and I believe God will spare him just that he may see you again. But I tell you what it is, Annie Brooke, if we return and find that saint has left the world before the one wish of his heart is gratified, I shall feel uncommonly like cursing you. Now you know what I think of you. Go upstairs at once and get ready; we leave here immediately.”
“Oh John!” moaned poor Annie.
But John Saxon was obdurate. One of the waiters came in and asked the gentleman if he wanted a room. John briefly explained his errand. He would have a meal of some sort, he said, and must leave by the midnight train. The young lady, Miss Brooke, his cousin, would accompany him.
If Mabel scorned the lift in order to get to her room, Annie was glad to avail herself of it. She was glad to sink back into a corner of the spacious lift and close her eyes for a minute and try to recover her scattered thoughts. Was the whole world crumbling to pieces around her? Were all her schemes to come to naught? The necklace—would her dealings with Mr Manchuri in the matter of the necklace ever be discovered? Would other matters in connection with that disgraceful affair come to light? Would Mabel—poor silly Mabel, left all alone with Lady Lushington and Mrs Ogilvie—confess the truth? Annie was terrified that Mabel would do so. At this moment she dreaded Mabel even more than she had dreaded Priscilla; for Mabel was essentially weak, whereas Priscilla was essentially strong. If Priscilla thought it right to go through a certain course, she would go through it, come what might; but Mabel could be moved and turned and tossed about by any wind of chance.
Mabel was certainly in a tight hole. To pursue a different metaphor, her little boat was out on a most stormy sea. With Annie as pilot it might get safely to shore, but without Annie it was sure to knock to pieces on the rocks of circumstance. Mabel would tell. What was Annie to do? Why had John Saxon come? How she hated, how she loathed her manly cousin at that moment! What a fool she had been to give him her address! She had done it in a moment of impulse, little, little guessing that he would act upon the information so quickly.
He had come in person. She could not shuffle out of the strong grasp of that iron determination. She must leave all her fun just where she hoped it was really beginning.
It was a pale and worn-out Annie who presently arrived in Mabel’s room. Mabel was pacing up and down, her face quite chalky in colour and her eyes wild with fright.
“Well, now,” she said the moment she saw her friend, “what is to be done?”
“Oh, do think of some one besides yourself!” said Annie. “Have you no pity for me, with my dear uncle so ill—dying?”
“But you don’t really care,” said Mabel, looking full at Annie.