If Mrs. Vance had expected to be congratulated by the banker and his daughter upon her approaching marriage she was doomed to disappointment. Neither one of them alluded to it at all, though she knew that Lance had told them, and that they resented her conduct bitterly by the cold and altered manner, almost amounting to contempt, with which they treated her.
She was obliged to broach the matter to Mr. Lawrence herself, coupled with a modest request for the funds wherewith to purchase as elaborate a trousseau as could be gotten in the short time intervening between then and Christmas.
Mr. Lawrence, in the grimmest and coldest manner imaginable, presented her with a check for a thousand dollars, and with profuse thanks she hurried out to expend it in finery.
She was very happy now in the coming fulfillment of her cherished desire, and no coldness, not even the lowering shadow on Lance's face when he came and went, had power to alter her imperious will.
To win him she had steeped her hands in human blood and risked the dangers of the scaffold. It was not likely she would relent now, when the sin and sorrow lay behind her in the past, and the happy consummation of all her efforts loomed brightly before her.
She went on blithely with her task of preparation for the grand event, seeing dressmakers and milliners daily, and leaving herself no time for retrospection in her whirl of engagements. And time, that "waits for no man," hurried on and brought the day of fate.
[CHAPTER XXXV.]
Slowly and wearily passed the days to the poor captive girl immured in the midst of Doctor Heath's insane patients.
She was kept closely confined to her room, seeing no one at all except the kind-hearted attendant, Mary Brown, and occasionally Doctor Heath. Both these persons, in spite of her agonized assertions and explanations, persisted in regarding her as a lunatic.