A footman opened the door and announced Mr. Durnford.
Lady Judith turned with an air of haughty interrogation. Her frown and the angry flash from her dark eyes asked plainly by what right he approached her at such an hour. And then she remembered the closeness of the friendship between Durnford and Lavendale, and her heart sank with a sudden fear.
"Is his lordship ill?" she asked eagerly, as if the world knew but one lordship.
"No, madam; but I come from him. I am the bearer of a letter."
He took a sealed letter from his breast-pocket and handed it to her.
She snatched it from him, and turned to the window, where there was just light enough to read it, her bosom heaving, her cheeks whitening to the hue of her powdered hair.
The letter was all tenderness: a letter of renunciation and farewell, eloquent with saddest feeling: a letter which to a less imperious nature might have been salvation. But Judith wanted to go to perdition her own way; and on a woman bent upon losing her soul for her lover, all unselfish reasoning must needs be wasted.
"Have I counted the cost?" she asked herself, "and if not I, why should he be so punctilious? Lavendale! Lavendale, whose very name is a synonym for dissipation and debauchery—for him to turn mentor and lecture me! O, it is too much!" and then, turning fiercely upon Durnford, she exclaimed,
"This is your work, sir."
"Indeed, no, madam."