Tony had no more gold to reward this treachery.
When Dearborn came home that night from Versailles he found a note on the table, leaning up against the box in which the two comrades kept their mutual fund of money. Dearborn's advance royalty was all gone but a hundred francs.
"I have gone to London," Fairfax's note ran. "Sell anything of mine you like before I get back, if you are hard up.—Tony."
He spent two pounds on a pistol. If he had chanced to meet Cedersholm with her, he would have shot him. From the hour he had received her letter and learned that she was going to marry Cedersholm, he had been hardly sane.
At five o'clock on a bland, sweet afternoon, three days after he had left Paris, he was shown up to her sitting-room at the Whiteheart Hotel, in Windsor. He had traced her there from the Ritz.
Mary Faversham, who was alone, rose to meet him, white as death.
"Tony," she said, "don't come nearer—stand there, Tony. Dear Tony, it is too late, too late!"
He limped across the room and took her in his arms, looking at her wildly. Her lips trembled, her eyes filled.
"I married him by special license yesterday, Tony. Go, go, before he comes."
He saw she could not stand. He put her in a chair, fell on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He clung to her, to the Woman, to his Vision of the Woman, to the form, the substance, the reality which he thought at last he had really caught for ever. She bent over him and kissed his hair, weeping.