CHAPTER XXXI
Lily sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She had been dreaming—dreaming of home, of Aunt Emmeline, and of kind Uncle Tom. And then, all at once, she remembered everything. This at once familiar and unfamiliar place was her bedroom, in the Convalescent Home where she had been treated with such wonderful kindness during the last ten days.
Only ten days since that awful night? It seemed to her a year. Sometimes she still felt as if it was all a dream. And yet—and yet——
All at once she covered her face with her hands. To-day, incredible though the fact still seemed, was to be her wedding day!
It was Hercules Popeau who had worked the miracle—for it still seemed a miracle to the two most closely concerned. It was he who had persuaded the cautious English lawyer, Mr. Bowering, that if Lily Fairfield were to be saved from the terrible ordeal of giving evidence against her pseudo-aunt, she must become, before the trial of Countess Polda, Angus Stuart’s wife—the chattel of her husband, compelled, that is, to follow him where he ordered her to go.
There had been a good deal of rather anxious discussion. For one thing, Angus Stuart had been unwilling to take advantage of the strange position in which Lily found herself. But once Mr. Bowering and Hercules Popeau had overcome his scruples, Lily had been profoundly moved to see how ecstatically happy her lover had become. Almost as happy, she now whispered, as she was herself!
There came a sudden knocking at the bedroom door, and the matron, walking in, pulled up the blind.
“Am I too early?” she asked solicitously.
Lily shook her head, smiling.
And now, with the sun streaming into the room, for the very first time the awful nightmare which had always been there in the background, even during the last few joyous days, seemed to fade away. Lily forgot the past and thought only of the future.