[CHAPTER XLII.]
In spite of his outward nonchalance and sang froid, Leslie Noble at heart was restless and impatient and consumed by a burning anxiety.
Six weeks had elapsed since he had incarcerated his beautiful prisoner in the ruined old house in the wood, and in all that time he had been afraid to venture back to see her, owing to a keen suspicion he had imbibed regarding the close espionage that was kept upon his movements by the employes of Colonel Lockhart.
The slight flesh wound Lady Vera had inflicted on his arm had entirely healed, and with it had died out his futile anger against her, giving place again to the weak love that had urged him to that desperate recourse of abducting her.
"I was rash and hasty in my last interview with her," he tells himself, "I should have remembered that love cannot be forced. I must woo her gently, with respectful looks and reverential words. I must sue for her favor humbly, as if she were a queen and I her humble slave. Many a woman has been won by flattery."
The longing came over him to woo her with rich gifts and costly jewels poured lavishly at her feet as if naught were too splendid and costly for his beautiful idol.
Alas! his splendid fortune had dwindled to a wretched competency under the various extravagances of Ivy and her mother.
"Weak fool that I was to allow Ivy to retain those magnificent jewels," he thinks, bitterly. "She ruthlessly sacrificed my fortune to obtain them, and by every right on earth they belong to Lady Vera, who is my real wife, not to the woman who usurped her place."
Fostering these thoughts and feelings ceaselessly in his breast, Leslie Noble at last conceived a dastardly design to possess himself of the jewels which he had at first decided should remain the property of his deserted and repudiated second wife.