Whatever happens. But Janey had never dreamed of anything like this happening. As she walked slowly home with her bunch of snap-dragons, she realized that if Roger knew what she and Mr. Stirling knew about Annette, he would leave her. It was not too late yet. His mind was not actually made up—that slow mind, as tenacious as her own. He was gravitating towards Annette. But if she let it reach his ears that Annette had been Dick's mistress he would turn from her, and never think of her as a possible wife again. After an interval he would gradually revert to her, Janey, without having ever realized that he had left her. Oh! if only Roger had been present when that foolish young man had made those horrible allegations!—if only he had heard them for himself! Janey reddened at her own cruelty, her own disloyalty.
But was it, could it be true that Annette with her clear, unfathomable eyes had an ugly past behind her? It was unthinkable. And yet—Janey had long since realized that Annette had a far wider experience of men and women than she had. How had she gained it, that experience, that air of mystery which, though Janey did not know it, was a more potent charm than her beauty?
Was it possible that she might be Dick's wife after all, as that young man had evidently taken for granted? No. No wife, much less Annette, would have left her husband at death's door, and have fled at the advent of his relations. His mistress might have acted like that, had actually acted like that; for Janey knew that when her aunt arrived at Fontainebleau a woman who till then had passed as Dick's wife and had nursed him devotedly had decamped, and never been heard of again.
Was it possible that Annette had been that woman? Mr. Lestrange had been absolutely certain of what he had seen. His veracity was obvious. And Annette's was not a face that one could easily forget, easily mistake for anyone else. In her heart Janey was convinced that he had indeed seen Annette with her brother, passing as his wife. And she saw that Mr. Stirling was convinced also.
She had reached the garden of the Dower House, and she sank down on the wooden seat round the cedar. The sun had set behind the long line of the Hulver woods, and there was a flight of homing rooks across the amber sky.
Then Annette must be guilty, in spite of her beautiful face and her charming ways! Janey clasped her hands tightly together. Her outlook on life was too narrow, too rigid, to differentiate or condone. Annette had been immoral.
And was she, Janey, to stand by, and see Roger, her Roger, the straightest man that ever walked, and the most unsuspicious, marry her brother's mistress? Could she connive at such a wicked thing? Would Roger forgive her, would she ever forgive herself, if she coldly held aloof and let him ruin his life, drench it in dishonour, because she was too proud to say a word? It was her duty to speak, her bounden duty. Janey became dizzy under the onslaught of a sudden wild tumult within her. Was it grief? Was it joy? She only knew that it was anguish.
Perhaps it was the anguish of one dying of thirst to whom the cup of life is at last held, and who sees even as he stretches his parched lips towards it that the rim is stained with blood.