He draws her to his heart with a fierce and sudden tenderness, and she lets his lips rest unrebuked upon her own. "I promise," he murmurs; and she knows he means it.
The telegram that has reached Lady Jean has been despatched from Monte Carlo. It contains these lines:
"Sir Francis Vavasour lies here dangerously ill—it is feared with typhoid fever. He asks constantly for you. Come at once."
When Lady Jean is once more alone she reads the message with a contemptuous laugh.
"He must be mad," she says. "I to run the risk of infection—I to turn sick-nurse! I to run the gauntlet of scandal and discussion for—him! Pshaw! if he wants a ministering angel, let him send to Lauraine. It is her metier, not mine." Then she goes to her writing-table and takes pen and ink and writes these lines:
"Your husband is dangerously ill. The enclosed telegram will explain. Keith Athelstone was severely wounded in a duel fought in Paris this evening, and he has only a few days to live. If you wish to see him alive come at once. He is at Lady Jean Salomans' house, No. 13, Rue Victoire Paris."
This letter she seals and addresses and despatches immediately. Then, with that same light of triumph in her eyes, that same relentless and unsparing hate in her heart, she goes to her room and to rest.
No ill dreams disturb her—no sleepless hours of weary wakefulness. She has never known remorse in all her life, and in her ears the "still, small voice" of conscience has long ceased to whisper. And as her eyes close in sleep to-night she only thinks: "Vengeance is mine!"