banging the door, and a minute later she heard the butler whistle for
a hansom.

The deserted wife was perfectly aware that Jim's sudden admiration
arose from pride of proprietorship, and objected to be cajoled into
righteous matrimonial principles on such terms. As it was scarcely one
o'clock she seated herself to consider if it would be worth while to
lift her uxorious pig out of the mire he loved. A footman with a
salver interrupted these creditable meditations.

"A lady called twice to see your Grace this evening," said the man,
presenting a visiting-card, "and has now called again."

The Duchess lifted her eyebrows as she lifted the card. "At this
hour?"

"The lady says her business is important, your Grace."

"What business----?" here her eyes fell on the card, and a swift
alteration of expression changed her into a different and harder
woman. "Ask Mademoiselle Aksakoff to join me here," she ordered
abruptly.

The sword had not yet dropped, but the hair could not suspend it much
longer. Katinka was in England, in London, in her house. And
Demetrius? What of him? Why had he not come also? Leah asked herself
these questions with brutal directness, resolved to shirk nothing of
the imminent danger. After the first dash of dismay her nerves braced
themselves for the ordeal, and she advanced to greet Mademoiselle
Aksakoff with a conventional smile, meaning nothing and yet
everything. This gave place to an amazed look when she beheld the
haggard antagonist with whom she had to cross swords.

"My--dear--girl! What have you been doing with yourself?"

She might well ask. Katinka was no longer the demure nun, but a
fierce, goaded creature of the feline tribe. Dressed quietly in
unrelieved black, hatted, cloaked, and gloved, she presented the
appearance of one sorely tried in the fiery furnace of affliction, and
less lucky than Daniel's brethren. That thin worn face, those hollow
eyes, the wry mouth, the dark hair plentifully bestreaked with
grey--she was demoralised, uncanny, and aggressively cruel. In a flash
the Duchess knew that this untimely visitor knew the truth, and was
prepared to do battle. No quarter would be given by Katinka Aksakoff,
and Leah, with a deep breath, braced herself for an Armageddon duel.
The contrast between the dowdy Russian girl and the magnificently
arrayed woman lay entirely in the garb; otherwise they were cats of
the wildest. Their faces took on a marked resemblance; a stealthy,
cunning, sly, guarded expression effaced their ordinary looks. If
Katinka's eyes gleamed dangerously, so did those of Leah; if Leah held
herself like a pantheress about to spring, so did Katinka. In that
splendid room two pre-historic creatures were about to fight over the
male. Here indeed was woman, the female of man. Civilisation was
nowhere.

"You know why I have come?" asked Katinka, in a voice as hard as her
eyes, and those might have been fashioned of granite.

Leah, with flattened ears, so to speak, professed ignorance. She did
not intend to criticise until fully aware of facts. A shake of her
head conveyed the denial and brought forth one bitter word.

"Liar!"

The Duchess glanced towards the door, remembering that the servants
had not yet retired and might be within earshot.

"Would you mind speaking in a lower tone?" she suggested between her
teeth, for the insult struck home.

"Sit down," ordered Katinka, imperiously.

"I prefer to stand," retorted her antagonist, fighting for the inch.

Mademoiselle Aksakoff advanced one step and her eyes probed those of
the Duchess. Without words the situation was adjusted, and in Leah's
favour, for the Russian suddenly sat down with a quick, indrawn
breath. By that action the woman who had done the wrong knew that she
was the stronger of the two, and a tyrannical instinct to bully the
weak rose hotly in her breast.

"What do you mean by coming at this late hour and misbehaving?" she
demanded harshly.

"You know well what I mean."

"Pardon me, I never profess to understand the vagaries of a madwoman."

At this brutal speech Katinka's hand shot into her pocket, but Leah
did not move.

"A weapon?" she asked sneeringly; "that would be quite in keeping with
your blatant nationality. Foreigners are so fond of the melodramatic."

The girl withdrew her hand quietly. "You are too poor a creature to
kill, Lady James."

Leah smiled at the old title, and passed the remark with a
contemptuous shrug.

"Later on, perhaps--who knows?"

"Who indeed? It is impossible to foresee what an hysterical lunatic
will do. Do you propose to shoot or stab me, or to blow me up? I
understand that bombs are favoured in your happy country."

The crude hostility of the speech was plainly intended to infuriate
the Slav-woman, but it missed the mark aimed at. Katinka looked at the
mocker gravely.

"How afraid you are!"

Leah shrugged again; the remark was too futile to be commented upon.

"Yes, you are," went on the other, a trifle roused; "else you would
have me turned out by your servants."

"Later on, perhaps--who knows?" repeated the Duchess, using the girl's
own words; then continued soothingly, "No; I shall not call the
servants and make a scandal, since your father is my friend."

"Your accomplice, Lady James."

"What an unpleasant word, and how very unsuitable!"

"For what you did in Paris."

"I did nothing in Paris to deserve such a word. Perhaps you mean
something else. You foreigners know the grammar of English, but rarely
the meaning of words. I remarked the same defect in your father."

"I have no father."

"Indeed, I have not yet heard of his death."

"Your misunderstanding of my meaning is pretence."

"Ignorance, I assure you. And as it grows late and I am tired, may I
ask you to explain your business?"

"I can do so in one word--Demetrius." Katinka rose to give full force
of expression to the name, and her voice rose with the utterance.

Leah remained perfectly calm, and indulged in badinage. "Demetrius? Oh
yes, that horrid little man with the waxed moustache: a doctor or a
chemist, wasn't he?"

"Your lover!"

"Oh no. I have no use for that sort of person; if I had I should
certainly not pick one out of the gutter. Demetrius? Yes," she went on
musingly, but watchful of her enemy, "I had almost forgotten him. He
went to St. Petersburg, didn't he? And you loved him, I remember. A
queer choice I thought at the time. Well, have you married him?"

"It grows late and you are tired," mocked Katinka, successfully
keeping her temper, and thereby disappointing the Duchess; "we had
better not waste time."

Leah yawned. "It seems to me that we have been doing nothing else
since you came in."

"Demetrius is in England."

"Really! How very interesting! As doctor or Prince?"

"As an escaped Siberian felon."

"No!" Leah's face assumed a skilful expression of mingled pity and
horror. "Poor little man! He was mad to go to Russia. I thought so
when I read his letter, which I sent you."

"The forged letter."

"Don't be silly; one would think you were on the stage."

Katinka bit her lip to prevent furious speech, and locked her arms
behind her as though she feared lest temper should engender violence.
Leah noted her expression, however, and retreated towards the bell.

"You are talking nonsense," she said coldly, "and much as I respect
your father, I shall certainly summon, the servants to put you out
unless you go at once."

"I shall not go, and you shall not order your servants to put me out,"
cried Katinka, fiercely. "I defy you to press the button of the bell."

With a feeling that the girl had scored on this occasion Leah withdrew
her hand, making the usual excuse: "For your father's sake I spare you
the indignity."

"I repeat that I have no father."

"And I repeat that I am tired. What do you want?"

"You must arrange with me to see Constantine."

"Who is Constantine?"

"You know."

"I do not."

"You do."

Their eyes met, and this time Leah won the victory over a woman
obviously worn out.

"Constantine is Demetrius," explained the Russian, in a fatigued voice
and closing her eyes. "Oh, my God!" She dropped into her seat with a
low wail and covered her face.

Leah heard the clock strike the half-hour through the sobs of her
visitor. She was absolutely sure that Katinka was at her mercy, and
wished to dismiss her, beaten and crushed. But first it was necessary
to learn why Demetrius had not come also. Leah moved swiftly towards
the broken creature, and laid a firm hand on her heaving shoulder.

"My dear----"

She got no further. With the elusive spring of a wild animal Katinka
flung off the hand, reared, and struck out. The blow fell fairly on
Leah's mouth, and she found herself mopping up the blood of a
deeply-cut lip before she had any clear idea of what had taken place.

"Oh, you liar, you beast, you devil!" cried the Russian, with the
savagery of a Kalmuck tent-woman. "I could kill you--kill you."

"Mad," mumbled Leah, with the lace handkerchief to her lips.

"I am sane," retorted the other, swiftly. "I know all. You lured
Constantine to Paris; you sold him to my father to hide your
iniquity. I saw Helfmann the spy; do you hear--the spy! I bribed him;
it took months to bribe him, but in the end I bought the truth. My
father--shame to my father--drugged Constantine at your table, and
Helfmann as a sham doctor took him to Havre, to Kronstadt, to Moscow.
The Grand Duke Sergius"--here she spat when mentioning the hated
name--"yes, he, that beast of beasts, sent him to Siberia for life;
ar-r-r--for life! do you hear, Judas, Jezebel, animal that you are! I
followed there; I followed the man I loved----"

"And who did not love you," muttered the Duchess, rocking with the
pain of her swollen and bleeding lips. She had seated herself by this
time, and did not seek to stem the torrents of insults.

"And why?" Katinka flung back her head and her nostrils dilated.
"Because you stole his heart that he might do your evil bidding. But
he loves me now--with all his heart and soul he loves me now. I went
to Tomsk to aid his escape; I followed to Sakhalin. I waited and
waited, eating my heart out. Oh, my heart!" she laid her hand on her
breast; "oh, my breaking heart! We escaped--he did--I did; we escaped.
Do you hear, you who sold him? There were months of terror and sorrow
and cruel cold. But God was good; He was kinder than man, more
merciful than you, who damned a soul to that frozen hell. God--the
good God, whom I adore and worship," she fell on her knees, striking
her hands together--"He aided us to reach the waiting ship of Strange,
and----"

"Strange!" Leah rose, shaken and sick. "Strange!"

Katinka leaped up to face her. "The man you bribed with six thousand
pounds to take your sin on his soul. I know all about your wickedness;
Strange knows; Constantine knows. We will tell the world what we know;
and you, shamed, disgraced, beaten, hounded out of your world--ah,
down will you fall--fall--unless----"

"Unless?" Leah, gripping a chair and swaying, looked up. "Unless?"

"You come to Southend to see Constantine."

"I refuse."

"Then I tell everything. I go to your husband." Leah, in spite of her
pain, laughed at the idea. "I go to your police. I tell----"

"Stop, I shall come, since you insist upon it."

"I do--Constantine likewise. He is ill--very ill; his eyes are blinded
by the glare of the snows whither you sent him; he is--oh, my poor
angel, my patient saint!--he is----" Stopping abruptly, she looked
with an evil eye at the woman she had so shamefully marked. "I will
leave you to see the wreck you have made of him. You will come?"

The Duchess nodded. "But I can explain all," she mumbled.

"Explain it, then, to Constantine," said her enemy, contemptuously. "I
go now. Meet me to-morrow at Liverpool Street Station--at the barrier.
We can go to Southend by the five o'clock train. Constantine is on
board Strange's ship, which lies off Southend."

"Ah! Then you mean to----"

"Carry you away? No; you are not worth it."

Leah's indomitable courage, quelled for the moment, blazed up
fiercely. She forgot her pain, her disfigured mouth, and faced Katinka
in a blind rage. "You--you----" she clenched her hands, and panted
like a spent runner. "You have said all; I agree to all."

The Russian looked at the wounded mouth with a cruel, calm smile, then
sauntered deliberately to the door. There she smiled still more
serenely, pointed a mocking finger at her enemy's wry mouth, and
slipped away without a word, and almost without a sound.

Leah sprang to the mirror. Had this woman marred her beauty? The mouth
was swollen, the lips still bleeding; there were wounds within and
without, and a rather loose tooth. Leah could have howled aloud at the
shame, the humiliation of her defeat. That she should be struck,
beaten, mastered--she of all women; she--she! "Ar-r-r! Augh!" she
cried, but softly, mindful of danger. Then the thought came to her
that she would have to account for her damaged mouth, and with the
thought came enlightenment. Passing quickly out of the room, she
ascended the stairs rapidly to her room. Half-way up she stumbled and
fell. The footman, hearing the fall, ran up and lifted her. He saw
that her mouth was bleeding. Natural enough--oh, perfectly natural!
"It's them beastly long trains," explained the footman in the servants'
hall.

CHAPTER XXXII

"Never knew you to tumble before, Leah," grumbled the Duke, next
morning, when admitted into his wife's bedroom.

"Accidents will happen," murmured the Duchess, rather lamely, and too
much shaken to be original. "I can't talk, Jim--my mouth is still
sore."

"What can you expect if you go a mucker? An' th' season's startin',
too. You'll not be able to show with that swellin'."

"A week at Firmingham will put me right. Katinka Aksakoff is coming
down also."

"Heard she looked in last night. What made her call at so late an
hour?"

"She's worried about her father," lied Leah, prepared for the
question.

"Had an almighty row with him over that bounder doctor, I expect."

Leah nodded languidly. "M. Aksakoff has gone to Southend. I take his
daughter with me there, to make peace."

"Southend? There's a hole! What's he doin' in that roost?"

"How should I know? I'll reconcile the two if I can, and Katinka can
be my companion at Firmingham."

"Dull company," confessed Jim, candidly; "she never could flirt."

"That will be no drawback," said his wife, dryly. "Go away, please."

"What lie am I to tell 'bout your sickness?"

"Tell the truth, by way of a novelty; or if you prefer a lie, say that
I have appendicitis. One must be fashionable, even in diseases."

"All right," said Jim, too obtuse to note the irony. "Sorry you're so
ill. You've made an awf'l mess of yourself: women will wear such
confounded trains. Goo'bye at present. I'll look in at Firmingham
durin' your week of penance"; and, talking himself out of the room,
Jim went about his ordinary nefarious occupations, feeling that he had
behaved as a husband should.

The Duchess turned wearily on her pillows and winced. Not with pain,
for her mouth, though still swollen, was much less tender. It was the
prospect before her that hurt. In the evening a difficult interview
had to be got through somehow, and her brain began to forecast the
probable result. If Katinka could be believed it would scarcely prove
to be a pleasant one. Demetrius apparently intended to punish her by
blackening an unsoiled character. "Such a nasty, revengeful spirit,"
thought Leah, feeling ill-used and depressed.

But, after all, what could the man say likely to incriminate her,
seeing that she had moved amongst the pitfalls of the plot as
delicately as Agag? Demetrius had conceived and executed the entire
scheme, and what he could say would only fit in neatly with Strange's
confession, which the public already knew and condemned. Her hand
could not be traced either in his Parisian journey or in the drugging
of the tea. How was she to know that Helfmann was a police spy, or
that the letter assuring her of the doctor's intended return to Russia
had been deftly forged? Her surface behaviour, at least, was perfectly
honest, and would bear even the scrutiny of an interviewer. She could,
taking a broad view of unpleasant circumstances, defy the creature;
but nevertheless felt instinctively that it would be unwise to dare
him to do his worst. Such a plotting, narrow-minded, sneaking beast
would ruin himself to ruin her, and mud, if thrown persistently, was
apt to stick even to the whitest robe. What a shame that this animal
should so persecute her! How hard on a kind-hearted woman, whose sin,
as he called it, was merely an error of judgment. By the time Leah
finished her reflections her frame of mind was one of much-injured
innocence.

Later in the day, when driving to Liverpool Street Station to keep her
hated appointment, Leah half decided to call on Aksakoff. But second
thoughts assured her that his intervention was quite out of the
question. Were Demetrius to be arrested in British waters the Radical
press would howl, and nasty meddling politicians would ask unnecessary
questions in the Commons. It would be wiser, after all, to fight alone
and to the bitter end. If Demetrius thought she would give in,
Demetrius was entirely mistaken. He had yet to learn that she could be
as nasty as hitherto she had been nice. But he was horridly
ungrateful, as all men were. In this way did the arch-plotter salve
her conscience and compose her mind.

It was darkish when the brougham arrived at the station, and Leah,
glancing about under the electric lamps, saw Katinka waiting at the
ticket-barrier. For the benefit of an inquisitive maid and an
observant groom she addressed her gaily, though it was not easy to
speak with still aching lips.

"You _are_ punctual," said the Duchess, pressing an unwilling hand
with ostentatious warmth. "Excuse my speaking much. I fell on the
stairs last night after you left and hurt my mouth."

"I commiserate with you, madame," replied Katinka, sarcastically.

"So good of you. I hope M. Aksakoff will not expect me to chatter."

"My father?" echoed the girl, staring.

"He's at Southend, isn't he?" said Leah, impatiently; "at least, you
told me so last night. I have instructed my maid to go on to
Firmingham, while we travel straight to Southend. Such a cockney
place, isn't it? Then we can get back--oh, about what time?"

"Say eleven o'clock," returned the Russian, grimly. She now saw
through the clever comedy which was being played.

"You understand, Marie," said Leah, turning to her maid, who was all
ears and eyes; "see that the brougham is sent in time. Come with me,
dear--there's a reserved compartment--at least, I ordered one. Curl,
go and look."

Thus prattling to deceive her domestics, Leah adjusted a very thick
veil, which hid from the public a face whose expression was quite at
variance with her sweet nothings. When the two entered the carriage
and the train was moving slowly out of the station, Katinka burst into
a harsh laugh.

"I congratulate you, Lady James; you should have been a conspirator."

"So your dear father told me. Compliments run in your family,
apparently. Surely you do not blame me for putting things right with
my servants. They might think it queer, otherwise, and one cannot be
too careful with such creatures."

"I fail to see what good your exceedingly clever explanations will do.
Constantine intends to speak out."

"What about?" asked Leah, chafing, and throwing up her veil to manage
the girl more easily with her dominating eyes.

Katinka, always fiery, and with slack nerves after her Siberian
experiences, almost lost what temper she had left. "Need we keep on
your comedy, madame?"

"I'm sure I do not know what you mean. One would think that I wished
to deceive people, the way you talk. And after what I have done for
you, too--it's most ungrateful."

"And pray what have you done, Lady James?"

"Don't call me Lady James; your stupid mistakes get on my nerves.
Done? Why, I pretended to fall on the stair to excuse the state of my
mouth. Had I been a nasty, spiteful creature such as you are, I should
have given you in charge for assault."

"Give me in charge now," sneered the girl.

"I might. Don't drive me into a corner."

"You are inconsistent. If you have done nothing wrong, how can I
drive you into the corner you speak of?"

"Because you are a monomaniac," retorted the Duchess, angrily; "you
seem to think that I am the cause of the doctor's exile. I, of all
people, who would not hurt a fly."

"You would hurt a dozen flies if anything was to be gained," snapped
the other, irritably. "You betrayed my Constantine."

"I did nothing of the sort, as he will understand when he hears what I
have to say."

"Hearing and believing are two different things, Lady James."

Leah shrugged away the speech. "Of course, you are prejudiced, because
Demetrius loves me."

Mademoiselle Aksakoff fetched a long, deep breath. "Do not try me too
far."

"Do you intend to assault me again?"

"No; I even apologise for the blow. I told Constantine this morning of
my interview, and he said that I was wrong. It is for him to deal you
justice and punishment."

"Punishment! Justice!" Leah laughed aloud in sheer rage at her
inability to parry these insults. "And for what, pray?"

"Constantine will tell you."

"In that case I do not wish a second-hand judgment from you."

The two glared at one another, venomous and defiant. As usual, the
younger woman's eyes fell first, and she retreated to the furthermost
corner of the carriage, while Leah, pulling down her veil, tried to
face this most disagreeable situation. Not another word did they
exchange until the ducal servants branched off at Shenfield Junction,
and they had to be publicly amiable. Then, again, silence reigned
until their destination was reached. By that time Leah was more her
old insolent self, and disposed to be unpleasant.

"Will yon drive or walk?" asked Katinka, coldly, when they alighted on
the Southend platform.

"Walk, of course. I do not mind at all being recognised, since I have
come to see your father on board this yacht."

"Captain Strange would be flattered by your description."

The Duchess laughed contemptuously as they stepped into the street. "I
am scarcely responsible for M. Aksakoff's notion of a yacht.
Foreigners are so ignorant."

"They are not so clever as Englishmen--or Englishwomen."

"Except in trickery and blackmail, where they surpass them," retorted
Leah, her petty rage insisting on having the last word.

Katinka permitted her the gratification, and they walked the whole
length of the High Street in grim silence.

At a rude quay jutting from the beach of the lower town they boarded a
disreputable boat, rowed by two pirates and steered by a third. The
night was starry but moonless, comparatively calm, and noticeably
chilly. Leah shivered as the boat made for a vivid green riding-light,
which shone, an emerald star, no great distance from the shore. But
her shiver might have been an admission of dread. Katinka took it to
be so, and smiled in a gratified way as her enemy climbed the side of
the steamer, which was a veritable gypsy of the sea, untidy, dirty,
and decidedly questionable in honest eyes. Strange did the honours,
loud-tongued and raucous.

"Guess it do my eyes good to see your Grace," was his welcome.

"Hold your tongue, and don't use my title," she replied furiously.

Strange's milk of human kindness turned sour on the instant. "I ain't
high-falutin' enough, I s'pose. Pity I ain't a dandy skipper of sorts,
all hair-oil an' giddy gold tags."

Leah turned her back without deigning a reply, and looked inquiringly
at Katinka. The girl, with an enigmatic smile on her wan face, led the
way down some greasy stairs, into a stuffy state-room, and opened the
narrow door of a side-cabin. Leah entered and heard the lock click
behind her. Evidently Mademoiselle Aksakoff did not think it judicious
to remain.

"But I daresay her ear is at the key-hole," thought the Duchess,
contemptuously. She was trying to preserve her self-respect by heaping
obloquy on her rival, but scarcely succeeded as well as she desired.
Then she said "Ugh!" twice and with emphasis.

The interjections were not meant for the girl's possible
eavesdropping, but to show Leah's disgust at the close atmosphere of
the cabin. It was a nauseous, musky, sickly odour, which reminded her
only too vividly of the monkey-house at the Zoo. Neither light nor air
entered the den, save through the round port-hole over the bunk, which
was unscrewed. But even the briny sea-breeze blowing softly could not
do away with that thick, tainted atmosphere which had provoked the
visitor's exclamations. With her handkerchief to her mouth Leah's eyes
strove to become accustomed to the faint light. She saw dimly a heap
of blankets, but no form was visible beneath, and no face was to be
seen. Possible trickery occurred to her, until a voice came heavily
through the fetid gloom. Then, in spite of its odd, strangled sound,
she felt instinctively that Demetrius was buried somewhere under the
clothes.

"You will excuse the absence of a lamp, madame. My eyes are half
blinded with the snow-glare, and very tender."

"How strangely you speak!" remarked Leah, involuntarily.

"A sore throat," was the hoarse reply. "Siberia, as madame must be
aware, is not a summer climate." The wheezy sound ended in a kind of
piping whistle.

"I am sorry you have suffered," said the Duchess, at a loss what to
say. "Ugh, the smell!" she thought, seating herself on a locker, and
feeling almost too sick to control her faculties.

"Madame is too good."

A dangerous pause ensued, while Leah wondered what was about to
happen. The man assuredly was Demetrius, and Demetrius was assuredly
extremely ill. It was within the bounds of possibility that he might
spring up and kill her. The thought did not trouble her overmuch. So
dangerous a business had to be faced undauntedly, and she kept down
her womanly weakness with masculine strength. During those slow
minutes she could hear the lapping of the waters, on which the vessel
rocked; hear also the laboured breathing of the sick man. This stopped
for a moment, and then did she hear her own easy breaths. Demetrius
evidently heard them also, and had paused to listen. He laughed
weakly, softly, clucking like a fowl.

"Madame is very brave."

"I'm frightened to death," she assured him, to excite his pity.

"Your breathing tells me otherwise. I am certain, madame, that your
pulse beats regularly, and that your nerves are entirely in order."

"Is this a consultation?" she asked coolly.

"It is the farewell of two who loved," murmured the hard, thick voice,
muffled by the blankets. "That is, madame, of one who loved and of one
who did not; and therein, as M. Heine truly remarks, lies the tragedy
of existence."

"Demetrius--Constantine." Leah felt that she must come to the point
and get rapidly through the interview, if only to escape from the
sickening atmosphere. "Katinka accuses me of betraying you."

"Well, madame?"

"I did not. I swear I did not."

"Indeed? Mademoiselle Aksakoff is doubtless mistaken."

"In a way. She wishes to save her father from blame."

"As a good daughter should. Will you explain further, madame?"

"Certainly. I came, of my own free will, to explain. Katinka told me
how ill you were, and I could not bear to think you should die
believing me to be dishonourable."

"Madame speaks hopefully of my dying. It would please her, perhaps?"

"No. What do you take me for? I never loved you as you wished to be
loved; but if M. Aksakoff had not interfered, and we had married, I
should have come to love you."

"You speak of what might have been."

"I suppose so. Circumstances are altered. Marriage is out of the
question."

"Assuredly, and I am scarcely fit for a bridegroom."

"What is the matter with you?" asked Leah, anxiously.

Demetrius passed over the question. "Besides, Captain Strange informed
me that your husband has returned. Madame was doubtless pleased at
that marvellous resurrection, so cleverly managed."

"No," said Leah, honestly enough. "I was not; but circumstances made
it imperative that Jim should return."

"And for me to travel in Siberia?"

"Blame M. Aksakoff, blame M. Aksakoff," she insisted. "I am innocent."

"Be pleased to observe, madame, that as yet I have brought no
accusation against you."

"Katinka acted as your mouthpiece."

"You have not my authority to say that."

"Then I gather that you do not blame me for your exile?"

"How can I with any truth, madame, seeing that yon accuse M.
Aksakoff?"

"I do," said Leah, resolutely.

"In that case I regret that Mademoiselle struck the wrong person."

"You know that she struck me?"

"I was informed of it this morning, and express my regret that she
acted so foolishly. Did the blow hurt you?"

"It was most painful. I feel it still."

"Your lip is cut, then?"

"Both lips--inside, luckily, so there will be no visible scars. But
even now a very little would make them bleed."

Such was the profound egotism of her nature that she expected further
sympathy from the man she had reduced to such a condition. But the
doctor's stock of polite phrases appeared to be exhausted. In place of
a compliment came a hoarse chuckle, like the cry of an early starling.
"You appear to approve," said Leah, ironically.

"Pardon; I mentioned before that Mademoiselle, in my humble opinion,
was wrong."

"She was very wrong. I am not accustomed to deal with wild beasts."

"Spare me, madame; I owe her so much."

"I owe her nothing except revenge for striking me. But I excuse that
because she is ignorant of the truth."

"I am also ignorant, madame."

"You shall hear it now--yes, the absolute truth."

Again came the raucous sound, which might have been a laugh or a
groan--Leah could not tell which.

"The truth," murmured the sick man; adding, after a significant pause,
"I am waiting, madame."

"I went to Paris with Miss Tallentire," explained the Duchess,
beginning anywhere in her hurry, "and Mr. Askew followed."

"Followed you?"

"Certainly not. I always detested the boy--so conceited. He admired
Miss Tallentire, and his liking for me was the passing fancy of a
shallow nature. To arouse your jealousy, M. Aksakoff put it about that
Mr. Askew intended to marry me in Paris. The gossip--and it was merely
gossip--came to Mrs. Penworthy's ears. That woman hated me then, and
hates me now. To make mischief she told you. You came over to Paris.
There, you remember what took place."

"Not at our final meeting. My last memory of your face is seeing it
across the tea-table."

"You had a fit of some kind, and M. Aksakoff called up a Dr. Helfmann,
who took you away in a cab to be cured. Then I received a letter from
you, stating that you were going to Russia. As I fancied you might
have settled with M. Aksakoff about your pardon, of course I quite
believed it, and--and--I think that is all."

"Did you not know that the letter was forged?"

"No!"

"That the so-called Dr. Helfmann was a spy?"

"No!"

"That the coffee--or rather, that the tea was drugged?"

"No. How could I possibly know that M. Aksakoff was using me as his
tool? If the tea--it _was_ tea--well, if he put anything into the
tea, I did not see him do it. It was M. Aksakoff who gave you into Dr.
Helfmann's charge, when you were insensible. Now, am I to blame?"

"Your explanation is eminently satisfactory, madame."

"And you believe me?"

"It would be impolite to doubt a lady."

Leah was nonplussed. She was manufacturing conversation, and his
comments were trivial, if not ironical, as she shrewdly suspected. She
could not quite arrive at his real meaning. He avoided answering
leading questions, and would neither accept not decline her
asseverations.

"I have no more to say," she remarked, with an air of one washing her
hands of the whole affair.

Again a deadly silence ensued; again she heard the heavy breathing of
the creature hidden under the heaped blankets; again sounded the
drowsy lapping of the water and the faint sigh of the wind. This time
she resolved to make him speak, so that she might learn precisely what
he thought. But the moments passed and no speech came. Finally it did
come, in the unemotional voice of one who speaks in his sleep. He
discoursed on a subject about which she had no desire to hear.

"Paris--Havre--Kronstadt!" said the slow, drawling, monotonous tone,
"and then the weary journey across the Urals. Oh, the cold and the
snows and the bitter storms of Siberia! Chains and hunger, dirt and
rags; and always--always--the hopeless future. None loved me; none
lifted me up; none spoke words of kindness. Loneliness and sorrow and
the constant torment of painful memories."

The voice died away in a sob. Leah, desperately anxious to defend
herself still further, would have spoken. But her mouth was dry; her
lips ached; tremors thrilled her body as the nerves twittered, jumped,
and quivered. Over the low bunk she could see the rocking stars as the
vessel swung to her anchor. What glimmer of light there was revealed
faintly the piled blankets, and nothing more. The face was veiled by
almost material shadows. And again, drearily and heavily, rose the
thick, muddy voice, without variance in its tones, without the music
of feeling. It might have been, and probably was, a voice from the
tomb, as it surged sluggishly through the fetid gloom.

"St. Petersburg," announced the toneless voice, "Moscow, and the
farce of a trial. The waving of a white-gloved hand, and a courtly
bow, to dismiss me into pain and darkness and to a living grave.
Nijni-Novgorod, and Mother Volga, who takes us convicts to her
breast."

Here came the dry chanting of a weird song which made the listener's
flesh creep, and her guilty soul quail. Then again, slowly, wearily,
Demetrius began to name the stations of his cross on the way to the
calvary of a final prison. "Kazan, Pianybor, Perm, the bleak Urals,
that prison wall of the exile; Ekaterinburg, Tiumen, the doorstep to
the barren cell. Borka, Dobrouna, Oshalka"--the rough Russian names
grated on Leah's ears;--"Yevlevoi and the slow-flowing river, the
prison barge, the black bread, the bitter, biting, burning cold;
Tobolsk, with its deathly mists and clammy darkness of Egypt; the
Charity Song--the weary, weary Miloserdnaya!" He sang another line or
two in a cracked voice, and broke out more humanly: "Then the warm
sunshine like the smile of the good God, and days of those gentle
winds we shall never breathe more. The flowers and the winds, the
sunshine and the laughing children. Samarof, Sourgout, Narym"; he
paused to gather strength for the crying of a name which issued with a
sob of heartfelt agony: "Tomsk--oh, Tomsk! Those long, long days of
waiting for what was to be; the horrible mercies of the unjust. Kyrie
eleison! Christe eleison! Kyrie eleison!" She saw the convulsive
movements of the blankets, and knew that he was making the sign of the
cross. After the crying to God and His Son came the protest against
the cruelty of man. "The weary prison of Tomsk; the road--the long,
horrible road to the ice-bound coast. Sakhalin, the island of pain,
the hell of the innocent, and a human soul lost. Christe eleison! A
loving, sinning soul for which Thou didst die, lost--lost--lost!"

Leah's nerves ached and shook and shuddered as the account of the vile
journey welled forth smoothly like thick oil. With fixed eyes and
fascinated ears she took in the terrible Odyssey. After another
sobbing pause--the broken creature was crying bitterly--the voice
recommenced, droning on one note until Leah felt that she could have
screamed if only to vary the sound.

Demetrius spoke of the barren wastes of Sakhalin in the Gulf of
Ochotsk, where the freezing straits of Neviski run between mainland
and island. He told of obdurate Cossacks, of cruel gaolers, of the
treacherous Gilyak natives, who prevent the escape of the mortal
damned. A note of emotion crept into the voice, and in its level tones
she discerned a faint hope. A smuggled letter, and the assurance that
help was at hand; a corrupted warder, a bribed soldier, a black
starless night, and a desperate escape over deserts of snow. Then came
heart-rending relations of a drifting boat, of suffering and
starvation and cold which burnt to the bone. Leah heard of a brave
woman--"my love--my love," said the voice tenderly--toiling with a
bought Japanese fisherman to bring the tiny shallop to a haven beyond
the grip of the merciless Muscovite. The weird tale took her through
La Perouse Straits, northward amongst the Kurile Islands, and into the
naked lands of Kamchatka. Here again, as she gathered, the fugitives
were in danger of recapture; but they fled still further north through
the bitter cold, and under a bleak sunless sky, to herd with the
Koriaks. The tormented voice droned ever on about these filthy
savages, fish-eaters, and hunters of the unclean; it shuddered through
accounts of loathsome diseases, and of smoky defiled huts like the
hells of Swedenborg. And the man wailed always, ever and again, of the
danger of being retaken, of terrible suspense, of shattered nerves,
and of the eternal strength of a pure woman's love. The tale ended
with painful outbursts of joy at the sight of Strange's tramp standing
towards the inhospitable Siberian coast.

"Peace, plenty, warmth, food, safety, kindness, hope, love!" chanted
the voice, broken up into almost musical gratitude. Then a pause of
infinite meaning, ended by a dry clucking chuckle. "And I lived that I
might see you," breathed the man she had cast into the hell he had
described. Leah's hair bristled at the roots. The speech was so
terribly significant. But her soul still fought against the inevitable
punishment, whatever that might be.

"Not my fault," she panted eagerly; "horrible, horrible--but not my
fault! Oh, believe--believe me, Constantine."

"You have asserted your innocence before," murmured the sick man,
ironically; "and now----"

"Now?" her heart almost stood still, so intensely did she listen.

"We must part for ever."

"But you--you----"

"I devote what remains of my life to the woman who has saved me--to
the angel who drew me out of the frozen deeps of hell."

"And--and you--you will say--nothing?"

"This boat leaves here to-night for a place which need not be
mentioned. I go out of your life for ever, and silent."

"Oh, thank you--thank you!"

"For what, madame, since you assure me of your innocence?"

Leah felt awkward. She had said too much. "Katinka is so prejudiced
that I thought--I thought----"

Her voice died away. The lie would not come forth in the presence of
this dying wretch.

"You thought she would be jealous. Ah, no, madame." Demetrius paused
and clucked again like a brooding hen. "She permits you to kiss me
with a last kiss."

"No!" Leah half rose, and fell again, recoiling with a cry of terror
at the prospect of setting the final seal on her treachery, as did
Judas in the Garden.

"I beg of you, my first love. One kiss to dismiss me into the
silence--to close my mouth for ever and ever."

So he did doubt her; he did not believe. All her lies were discounted;
all his conversation was merely ironical and make-believe. He held her
in a vice, and release would come only when she submitted to a
revolting caress.

"I will not--I dare not," she stammered, shrinking against the wall in
an agony of physical fear from an object which a guilty imagination
revealed as loathsome to sight and touch; "you--you have no right
to----"

"The right of love," said the weary voice.

"You have no proof."

"The cypher letters"; and a lean hand held out a packet, drawn from
under the discoloured blankets.

"For one kiss, madame--for one kiss."

"Ugh!" groaned Leah, and snatched eagerly.

Packet and hand disappeared swiftly, and the voice whistled in a
jeering manner. "One kiss, madame, one kiss."

She still fought. "My mouth is sore. I am----"

"One kiss--one kiss--the last and the best; or--or----"

Leah, writhing against the wall, gasped soundlessly. In that last word
there was the sound of a terrible threat. It was the knell of
respectability, of ease and luxury, and of all that makes life worth
living. A single caress would buy the evidence; a touch of her mouth,
and she would be free for ever and ever and ever.

"One kiss, then," she muttered; and with all her soul crying
strenuously against the horror, she tottered forward. "One"; her lips
sought the place where a mouth might be supposed to be waiting. Two
arms flew up and gripped her.

She could not scream, for the arms dragged her down, belted her like
iron bands. Her mouth was on his, his lips were on hers. She writhed,
silent and agonised, in the horrible caress, in the abominable
embrace, trying to free herself in vain. Demetrius placed his lean
hand on the back of her head and absolutely ground her mouth against
his own. She could feel the wounds break and bleed, sanctifying the
kiss of Judas.

His arms relaxed, she flung backward, and the long-withheld scream
broke forth shrill and vehement. As if in answer to that terrible
summons, Katinka tore open the door and entered with a smoky paraffin
lamp. With one hand the girl thrust the shaking, sobbing woman
forward, with the other held the lamp towards the face peering out of
the blankets.

"Oh, my God!" shrieked Leah, and sprang from the cabin, pursued by the
cackling of broken laughter.

She made for the deck--for the side--for anywhere, to be out of the
sight of that face; that face which would haunt her till she died.
Strange, in silence, handed her, sobbing and whimpering, down the
black side, where the boat received her. She dropped in a heap, and
beside her dropped from Katinka's hand a packet of letters. Above from
an open port-hole came clucking, cackling, chuckling laughter,
insanely gleeful, and the silent stars of God shone over land and sea.

CHAPTER XXXIII

So Leah won after all. She went out with a definite purpose, and
returned with that purpose achieved; yet not fully, since what
she desired had been flung to her as a bone to a dog. In the
panic-stricken flight from the field she carried with her the spoils
of victory and something less desirable. The price of her good name,
the security of her position, the entire triumph--these, as she well
knew, had been gained by shameful self-surrender. Indeed, it could
scarcely be called a victory, seeing that she had succumbed to the
masterful brutality of her enemy. Nevertheless--and she derived
comfort from the thought--it could not be termed a defeat. Her social
glory yet flamed unextinguished; her character could not be smirched,
and she could yet hold up her head to flout the found-out of her sex.
But something bitter spoiled the flavour of these sweets. She had lost
her belief in the fetish; its spell of good luck was broken; her nerve
was gone, and with it self-respect. All she desired was to hide
herself amongst familiar surroundings, that their very familiarity
might fence in her quailing soul from impossible danger. And that the
danger could be so described by her intellect revealed a demoralised
will.

The cypher letters attesting her share in the conspiracy she destroyed
by fire. They were genuinely those she had written, and the number was
correct, so, when their ashes floated up the chimney, Leah drew the
long, deep, relieved breath of one whose chains have been struck off.
Yet, even at the moment of release, she shuddered to the core of her
being. The ghost of a futile crime was laid, but the ghost might
return. Demetrius had truly parted with all tangible evidence, and his
unsubstantiated story would be whiffed away as too romantic for
belief. Moreover, M. Aksakoff, for the sake of his own good name, and
that of his Government, would swear to her innocence of this gross
intrigue. She was safe--absolutely, entirely, and wholly safe. The
world would never know how she had capered on the verge of an abyss,
or how nearly she had missed her footing. But something--her
conscience probably--told her that an unseen Judge was summing up her
delinquencies; that she was being weighed in the balance and would be
found wanting, even though her kingdom did not pass from her. This
Judge, impartial, terribly quiet, severely righteous, might have been
God; and He was God, although she refused recognition. Her tormented
soul inspired her with the dread of an all-seeing and condemning eye;
but she resolutely declined to admit the Maker, the Judge, or the
Unseen in any way. Shadows should not frighten her, for these were not
of the eating, drinking, merry-making world. All the same, shadows,
elusive and unexpected, did strike terror to her guilty heart, and she
reluctantly knew herself to be a broken woman. In those earlier hours
of safety this knowledge was very insistent.

The week of her retirement passed pleasantly enough. She doctored her
bruised lips, mended their torn skin, and argued occasionally with her
shameful soul. The quiet life of silent hours in the midst of
civilised balms partially restored her courage, but not as entirely as
she could wish. Piecing her broken nerves together as best she could,
she strove to remount the pinnacle of supreme and self-sufficient
egotism whence she had fallen. But Humpty-Dumpty could not be set up
again, try as she might to replace him. During those brooding hours
Leah recovered much, but not all. The week's end found her cured of
the skin-deep blow, and outwardly the same insolent, radiant beauty of
an adoring world. But she knew herself to be a changed being; the
pantheress had become a hare, although less innocent. The sword of her
tongue was still sharp, but the shield of self-righteousness was
broken, and a keen-eyed antagonist sufficiently assertive could have
reduced her to the same moral pulp that the interview with Demetrius
had left her. Woe to the vanquished indeed! What remained but that she
should receive the wooden foil of retirement from Destiny and leave
the arena for ever. Her soul protested against this tame submission,
so with indomitable courage she braced herself to further battle. With
the world, that is, not with Demetrius. His abominable kiss had sapped
her forces. She could face social enemies, she could defy the Eternal,
she could encounter the fiends of hell, but not the man who had flung
her into the dust--who had trailed her, and was still trailing her, at
his chariot wheels. Certainly he had steamed into the unknown, and she
would never behold him more. But his black influence remained and made
itself felt at untoward moments.

Jim paid his promised visit almost at the end of her seclusion, and
was disposed to be disagreeable on the plea that his wife had lied
unnecessarily. Being truthful himself, when there was nothing to be
gained by swerving from the path of rectitude, Jim abhorred a wasted
fib, and proceeded to condemn Leah for shooting an aimless arrow from
her mental quiver. It was the most pensive hour of the summer twilight
when Jim began his sermon, and he preached in his wife's sitting-room.
Darby sat beside Joan, who lay languidly on a sofa. What a perfect and
touching picture of connubial felicity! If only a reporter of
backstair gossip had been present to describe this middle-class
domesticity of these great leaders of fashion, Brixton might have
learned an edifying lesson from Belgravia.

"Now I do call it hard on a fellow," complained the Duke--"jolly
hard--that you can't talk straight, Leah."

"If I did you would scarcely feel flattered. What is it now?"

"Aksakoff! Says he was never near Southend. Swore till all was blue
that he'd never set eyes on that girl for months an' months."

"A sad deprivation for so affectionate a father."

"Well, then, he wants to know where she is."

"How should I know?" replied the Duchess, indifferently. "She chose to
remain at Southend, and I returned here alone."

"What were you doin' at Southend?"

"That is my business, Jim!"

"Mine also. You said something that wasn't true."

"Really? The Accuser of the Brethren in the pulpit with a vengeance!"

The Duke stared. "I don't know what you mean."

"I am quite sure you don't. Stop talking, please. I am too ill to be
worried."

"Rats," said Jim, elegantly; "you look like a picture.*

"Then permit me the privilege of one, and do not ask for replies."

The Duke strolled to the window in a huff, and surveyed his property
with sulky looks. Leah sat up on her sofa and pondered as to how much
she should say and how much leave unsaid. Jim had always been under
the impression that Demetrius had done his dirty work for money, and
the truth would not probably strike him as amusing. Leah could easily
have conceived and told a pretty fairy tale, as she was always
resourceful in the way of fiction; but the sight of his pink, fatuous
face filled her with rage. Why should he be a beast with women, and
she a vestal with men? Was not sauce for the gander sauce for the
goose also? She determined to tell him the whole brutal affair, with
certain reservations concerning the betrayal of Demetrius. Jim had few
moral scruples, but what he had would be averse to the betrayal of an
accomplice, however dangerous. Yes; she would tell him enough to annoy
him, and shake him out of his aggravating complacency. Also she wanted
some one in whom to confide. But how to bring up the subject again
without pandering to her husband's desire to be master?

He gave her the chance immediately. Like a bulldog, Jim never let go
of anything he had once gripped. Into his thick head had crept some
idea of a mystery, connected with Southend and with his wife's visit
thereto. Therefore he stared out of the window until he thought she
was more amenable to reason, and then came back to his seat with the
old question.

"Why did you go to Southend?" he asked, doggedly.

Leah, not yet ready, fenced. "I told you why I went."

"No, you didn't. Aksakoff says----"

"Of course he does. Did you ever know a diplomatist who told the
truth?"

"Huh! That comes well from you, considering."

"I never knew that white lies were political privileges. Besides,
Aksakoff is too ashamed of Katinka to tell the truth."

"What's she been doin'?" asked the Duke, alertly. He had the soul of a
knitter in the sun for gossip.

"Rescuing Demetrius," answered Leah, curtly.

"What!!!" Jim turned white and purple and red and green like a
rainbow, and spluttered at the mouth. His wife, eyeing him coldly, did
not think this exhibition of genuine fear a pretty sight. "He'll--why,
he'll--tell," gasped Jim, gulping down an extremely serviceable word,
which better fitted his feelings than surroundings.

"Of course."

"It's a question of money, I suppose."

"No, it isn't."

"But you told me----"

"What I chose to tell you. I always do."

Was there ever such a trying woman? Jim gulped down another
out-of-place oath, and strode noisily up and down the room. He halted
at intervals to tell his wife precisely what he thought of her. As the
room was isolated, and there was no danger of eavesdropping servants,
he indulged in a raised voice and a flow of language which revealed
his very limited vocabulary. Leah, with her chin on her knuckles and a
round elbow on the sofa cushion, listened unmoved, and looked as
though she were having her photograph taken. Jim might have been
executing his dance before a graven image for all the emotion she
showed.

"I've had enough of this," shouted his Grace, maddened by a disdainful
silence. "Just you explain, or I'll--why, hang it, I'll forget that I
am a gentleman."

"It seems to me that you have forgotten."

"Oh! You would drive a saint mad."

"Lionel is perfectly sane, and he is the sole saint I have met."

"Ain't you afraid of my striking you?" demanded Jim's bulldog nature.

"Horribly afraid. Can't you see how I tremble?"

Poor Jim. He was quite at the end of his resources. Mrs. Penworthy
always quailed, when he was in his tantrums; Lady Sandal fought fairly
and squarely, slang for slang: but this calm, smiling she-fiend only
sat like a dummy, waiting for him to do what she very well knew he
would never dare to do.

"I wonder if you're a woman," groaned the Duke, returning beaten and
baffled and completely exhausted to his chair.

"I wonder, too, seeing what you have made me put up with."

"Come, now, I've always treated you well."

"And other women better."

"What other women?" growled Jim, on his guard.

"You know very well."

"I don't. I know nothin', not even why you're bullyraggin' me. I
swear," cried Jim, pathetically, to the ceiling, "that it's
uncommonly hard for a cheery chap like me to be tied to a woman
who--who--who----" Here words failed him, and he gasped.

"Go on. I admire your descriptions of my personality. They are so
extraordinarily vivid and true."

"Who ain't what she ought to be."

Leah's opportunity to break the ice had come, and locking her hands
together, she gazed pensively at the Duke, who wriggled uneasily on
his seat. "How did you guess, Jim?"

"Guess what?" demanded the tormented man.

"That I am not what I ought to be."

The Duke stared aghast. "Then you ain't t" he shouted.

"Dr. Demetrius might say so."

"Leah!" He sprang up with clenched fists and his face took on a
direfully black expression, which rejoiced her heart.

"Jim, I believe--really, I believe that you have some love for me
after all."

"Oh, hang your fine talk. Demetrius?"

"I have kissed him."

"He dared to kiss you?"

"I dared to kiss him."

"You devil!" He suddenly raised his fist. Leah never winced, although
he towered over her with his mouth working and his eyes animal in
their unconsidering passion. It was impossible to strike, although his
heart cried out that she ought to die. With an oath--it came out
savagely this time--the fist dropped. "I'll have a divorce," muttered
Jim, and plunged for the door.

"Because I kissed a man. Nonsense."

"Kissin' doesn't stop at kissin'."

"Not with you, perhaps."

"Leah!" he turned and reclosed the door, which his rage had wrenched
open. "I know you've got a beastly tongue, and all that; but I could
have sworn that you were as pure as my mother."

"Well, and so you can."

"What? After you confessin' that you kissed Demetrius?"

"Ugh!" Leah shuddered, as a picture after the style of Wiertz rose to
her mind's eye. "I kissed a thing which was once Demetrius."

"Is he dead, then?"

"Better if he were. Ugh! That kiss was the most horrible thing I ever
had to do in my life."

"Why did you do it, then?"

"I was forced to," she said faintly, and nausea made her place a
handkerchief suddenly to her lips.

The Duke returned for the third time to his seat and looked into her
changing face with round inquiring eyes. "There's somethin' in this I
don't catch on to," he muttered; then, with gruff tenderness, and a
timid caress from which Leah did not shrink, "What is it, old girl?"

The Duchess laughed. It was amusing to find her husband playing the
spring bachelor. "I believe you love me," said she, recovering her
colour.

"You know I do, only you keep me at arm's length."

"Have I not cause?"

"You wouldn't have, if you behaved as a fellow's wife should," said
the Duke, bluntly. "Drop skirtin' round the bush and plunge in."

Leah admired and respected him in this peremptory mood, and for once
showed no disposition to use her sharp tongue. Instinct told her that
she had at length reached the end of Jim's tether, and that her
easy-going bulldog was inclined to curl his lips. Therefore did she
relate picturesquely and half-truthfully all her doings since the
beginning of things in the gallery. For the time being her story broke
off with the return of his Grace.

Jim listened with praiseworthy self-control. He certainly growled and
scowled at the relation of that early loss, which had bound Demetrius
to the service of the woman who betrayed him; but her artless
confession robbed the butterfly caress of half its iniquity. Sometimes
he grunted admiration of her pluck during the perils of his absence,
and grinned when she detailed the melodramatic interview with Strange.
Most of the time his eyes searched her face to make certain that she
was telling the truth. He believed she was, although she kept back the
precise way in which Demetrius had departed for Siberia. But she laid
enough of this particular blame on Aksakoff's back to make Jim swear.

"The mean, dirty, foreign hound," cursed Jim, between his teeth. "I
don't pretend to be an angel, but if I'd dropped to that----" he shook
his fist with a scarlet face. "An' to think Aksakoff should dare to
make use of your room--the rotten cur. I'll tell him what I think."

"Better not, Jim. Let sleeping dogs lie."

"Sleepin' mongrels," muttered the Duke. "All right; but don't you ever
speak to him again. Do you hear?"

He blared out the order in a regimental manner, and Leah nodded.

"Yes, dear," she said meekly, "we must draw the line somewhere."

Jim nodded and gloomed, and rumbled something about Aksakoff that
certainly was not a benediction. Then he harked back to his leading
question, which had not yet been answered. "Why did you go to
Southend?"

"Katinka, who had rescued Demetrius from Sakhalin Island, made me go
to see him. I had to obey, else there might have been trouble. The man
was ill on board Strange's steamer."

"Strange? Thought we paid the cad."

"We did." Leah frowned at the recollection of the sum. "But he had
some liking for Demetrius, and helped him to escape, worse luck."

"Come now, don't say that. Siberia----" Jim shuddered. "Beastly place,
Siberia."

"Nonsense. The climate is quite decent if you make up your mind. I
don't believe those convict creatures suffer so much as they say."

She told the lie without sign of emotion, but all the same felt an
inward qualm at the memory of the doctor's terrible narrative.

The Duke chewed his moustache meditatively. "An' you saw Demetrius?"

"Ugh!" Leah covered her face and rocked. "To live with that in my
thoughts, and to think that I kissed It."

"Why did you?" demanded Jim, furiously.

"To get the cypher letters connected with the insurance plot," she
replied, looking up; then detailed with necessary suppressions the
greater and least repulsive part of her nauseous visit to the tramp
steamer. The story sounded by no means pretty, and all her courage was
necessary to enable her to arrive at finis.

When she did the Duke sprang up in a pelting rage. "My wife to be
treated like that!"

"Oh, the treatment was not so bad," lied the Duchess, easily. "Of
course, my mouth was sore with the fall on the stairs, but I managed
to touch the lips of that--that---- Ugh! ugh!"

"I'll go to Southend to-morrow," announced the Duke, frowning. "I
can't thrash Demetrius, poor devil, but I'll hammer the life out of
that second-hand skipper."

"You won't find the boat there, Jim. I made inquiries, and learnt that
it left, as Demetrius said it would, shortly after my visit. And we
are quite safe. That kiss----"

"Leave the kissin' alone," cried Jim, turning on her fiercely. "Of
course, I see you couldn't quite help it; but----"

"No 'but' at all," contradicted Leah, sharply. "If I hadn't bought
back those cypher letters in that way the whole story might have come
out. And then, Jim--well, you know."

"I do--I do." Jim groaned and dropped on the sofa beside her. "Oh,
what fools we were to go into that insurance business!"

"It was my fault, dear. Don't worry. Demetrius will die soon, and
Strange has his blackmail. We are entirely safe."

"Katinka?"

"Oh," said the Duchess, with a flippancy she was far from feeling, "I
suppose shell sit by the grave of that man for the rest of her days."

"You're sure he's dyin'?"

"Yes!" She turned pale, and her voice quavered. "Such an object could
not possibly live. It would be a--a--sin."

"What's his trouble?"

"I don't know--I can't say. I don't want to say. It's--it's too
beastly for words. Ugh! He looked--looked--oh!" Leah's mouth worked
like a rebuked child, and she burst into tears--into real womanly
tears of shame and terror and outraged modesty. "That horrible
kiss--oh, that horrible kiss!" she wailed, pinching his shoulder in
her hysterical emotion.

"Poor old girl," said Jim, softly, and put his arm round her.

For once she appreciated marital sympathy, and learned that woman was
not made to live alone. Leaning her cheek thankfully against the rough
tweed of his coat, she sobbed vehemently, a frightened and crushed
creature. Jim felt that he was a married man after all, and
administered gruff consolation. It worried him to see this
high-spirited woman break down so utterly. "There, there," said he,
tenderly; "it's all right, old girl. You've got me."

"Thank God," murmured the beaten atheist.

Jim thought she must be going out of her mind. "What's that?" That she
should thank a God she did not believe in, and for a husband whom
hitherto she had always scorned, quite frightened him.

"What's that, Leah?" he asked again.

"Thank God for you," sobbed the Duchess, brokenly.

"Oh, my aunt," muttered the startled husband; then proceeded to fresh
consolation: "Well, then, I'll break the head of any bounder who dares
to say a word against you."

"Yes; but I'm afraid we're wicked, Jim."

"Other people are as bad," said the Duke, stoutly, "though I don't
suppose we'd get a Sunday School prize. 'Course it ain't much good
racin' in blinkers. We're a bad lot, the pair of us. I've behaved like
a rotter, and worse, while you're like something I can't think of.
Seems to me, Leah, we've been runnin' awf'ly crooked. Let's make a
fresh start from scratch, and go straight for the future. Tandem, y'
know," suggested Jim; "I'll be wheeler, as usual."

"We must make the best of things, I suppose," whimpered Leah, drying
her eyes, and still too much unstrung to realise her regeneration.

"That's about it. We'll give sin a rest for a bit. I'll chuck that
woman, and be your husband. I swear, Leah, I'll be a Methodist parson
sort of husband."

"No, don't," said the Duchess, alarmed. "It's a mistake to overdo
things."

Jim laughed, and she laughed.

"Well, I don't suppose I could keep on that game for long," said her
husband; "but I mean that I'll be awf'ly square, an' footle after you
round the town. It's th' sort of thing good husbands do, y' know. Give
us a kiss, old girl, an' we'll begin our married life all over again."

Leah obeyed very contentedly, and nestled in Jim's strong arms like an
innocent schoolgirl. She felt worn-out and tired, and drowsy from
excess of emotion; felt also that here was a much-desired haven for a
worried woman. "Dear old Jim!" she sighed, and Jim kissed her again.

The light was dying out of the sunset sky, and the room filled with
pale warm shadows. The reconciled pair sat silently on the sofa in the
gathering darkness, locked in a close embrace. The remorseful Jim felt
that they were prisoners in the same dock, and anxiously paved a
certain place with the very best intentions. Leah went to sleep,
thanks to a less tender conscience.

To the world these two were the prosperous and happy Duke and Duchess
of Pentland; to themselves, a misguided couple driven to do wrong by
circumstances; but to God--what did they appear in God's sight?
Remorse is not repentance, and remorse was the sole feeling of which
they were capable. Leah's sleep was the slumber of the worn-out; Jim's
self-promised reformation the result of shame. Shallow beings,
miserable creatures, they could not plumb the depth of their
wrong-doing. To them, sins were faults, and they were governed less by
the Sermon on the Mount than by the laws of society. Indeed, it is
questionable if either one of them was aware that such a sermon had
been preached; but both knew to a hair how far they could go without
being ostracised.

Jim was the better of the two, for the cold, brutal story told by his
wife made him hot with the public-school shame of having done things
which no fellow could do. The drastic codes of Eton and Harrow and
Rugby and Winchester came to his mind, and he saw how he had sinned
against the primitive laws of honour. Without oaths, he swore to lead
a better and cleaner life with Leah to help him. He would be
charitable and a good landlord, and take the chair at public
dinners, and speak in the Lords, and chuck Lady Sandal--who was too
expensive--and drop gambling to a certain extent, and not swear more
than necessary, and--and--do what a man in his high position ought to
do.

It will thus be seen that poor Jim's ideas of reformation were crude.
He felt this himself, poor man, in his narrow brain; and like the
child he really was, looked down to ask his clever wife's advice. He
had no time to consider the irony of the thing, even if it had
occurred to him, for discovering that Leah was sound asleep, he
wondered hugely. From the placid expression of her face it was very
plain that her crimes had not followed her into Dreamland. Jim
whistled softly, marvelling that she could slumber so immediately
after what she had told him. Laying her gently back on the sofa, he
summoned her maid, and went about his own business. This was to begin
reformation without loss of time.

"I must help Leah to be good," said the new broom.

But first he had to reform himself, and set about the first step, or
what he conceived to be the first step, with the enthusiasm of the
very bad person made uncomfortable by remorse. The vicar of Firmingham
received a visit from his patron just as he was about to enjoy a
well-earned dinner.

"Lionel," said the Duke, nervously, "I'm comin' to communion in a
month. Could you get me whitewashed in that time?"

Lionel stared, and looked upward. Strange to say the heavens did not
fall.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Were a purblind generation convinced of the invaluable blessings of
sorrow, trouble would be robbed of its sting. Ignorance and fear make
the unenlightened bemoan their burdens, or shirk bearing them, as they
should be borne, with the strength of hope. Chastening is the gift of
the eternal love, and those happy few who know this submit with joy to
the improving rod. But worrying is not submission, nor is grumbling a
recognition of curative effects. To be manful, to be daring, to be so
entirely wise from the learning of the lesson as to extract the sweet
from the bitter, thus do we prove ourselves worthy of that suffering
which God bestows in mercy and in pity. Troubles, if rightly
understood, deepen the most shallow character, purify the most soiled
soul. They begin in woe but they end in joy. When the lesson is
learned, then comes the holiday--or more precisely, the holy-day--of
peace and gladness.

Jim, in his simple way, understood that out of apparent evil great
good had come to himself and Leah. Never before had they understood
each other so well; never before had they forgathered with less
friction. The Duke's reformation was as genuine as his embryonic soul
was capable of making it. He felt desperately ashamed of himself at
the communion table, and shame of self, provided the physical ego be
not considered, is the beginning of repentance, which leads to hope,
which brings pardon and solace to the uneasy, sinful heart. Jim did
not become a saint by any manner of means, but he tried by fits and
starts to be a better man, and so, with true though faltering zeal,
advanced towards the light. And it was much gained that so once
self-satisfied a man should acknowledge himself to be at all in need
of improvement. The recalled code of schoolboy honour helped him to
amend the less drastic rules of the society man. Could Jim have only
gone still farther back, and remembered helpful nursery prayers and
childish faith, he might have seen even more clearly how to utilise
his mistakes. But he was yet a spirit in embryo, and his receptive
powers were not great.

Leah did not keep pace with her husband on the upward path. When the
danger was brought to naught, and her nerves became more normal, she
forgot everything with the alacrity of a hardened heart. The wind of
the Spirit had but troubled the surface of her nature; its depths
remained undisturbed. Within a fortnight her dear devil of egotism
returned, and she tore out of her book of life the disagreeable page,
which she declined to read for the second time. Certainly she retained
so much grace and memory as not to laugh at Jim's efforts to be good,
and she was less ready than of yore to see and comment upon his
obvious failings. But she secretly wondered that he should try to be
pious, when there was no worldly advantage to be gained by such
dullness. Besides, Jim, with the zeal of the newly converted, began to
preach in a stammering, shamefaced way about the duties they owed to
themselves in particular and to society at large. He even looked up
_Noblesse oblige_ at the tail-end of the dictionary, and quoted the
platitude to Leah. On that occasion she had laughed consumedly; but,
truth to say, Jim's sermons bored her immensely. She preferred those
of Lionel, who, as a professional guide to glory, knew his business,
whereas poor dear Jim was hopelessly muddled.

Therefore, while the Duke laboriously tried to be good, and succeeded
but doubtfully, Leah was coquetting deliriously with the world, the
flesh, and the many agreeable devils of her acquaintance. She improved
her former extravagances into something worse, and revenged herself
for being agreeable to Jim by letting both friends and enemies have
the full benefit of her witty, cruel tongue. The few who did not come
under its lash were in ecstasies at her sparkling conversation, and
the many who did made themselves pronouncedly pleasant out of mortal
fear. Leah danced and sang through the season with the insolent glee
of a woman who knows her position to be unassailable. Jim wondered at
her short memory, and tried to refresh it; but that she would not
endure, and declined even to hear the name of Demetrius. Moreover, as
M. Aksakoff had been translated to Copenhagen, there was no need to
smooth matters over between him and the Duke. Everything was safe,
everything was ripping, and she felt that her latest _pas de seul_ was
being executed on firm ground. She had skipped in the very nick of
time from that dangerous old mount which had erupted so feebly.

And no one could say but what she did her best to be amiable. Late in
the season she met and congratulated Mr. and Mrs. Askew; she told Lady
Richardson how she admired her courage--underlined--in marrying that
handsome pauper, Captain Lake; and forgivingly did she condole with
Mrs. Penworthy, when the unexpected death of Freddy, from overwork,
left that evergreen hack a widow whom no admirer wished to marry. Lady
Canvey was most tenderly considered, and Wallace, the globe-trotting
cynic, on Leah's introduction, amused the stay-at-home old lady by
special command. The sedate Hengists thought even more of the Duchess
than they had done of Lady Jim, and she was often asked to bore
herself in their protective company. She gave Sir Billy Richardson a
smiling time at one of the ducal seats, and invited Joan Kaimes to
Curzon Street for a week of shopping and frivolity. Also bazaars and
charity concerts, and meetings about the unemployed aristocracy, took
up her attention. The fashionable congregation of an exclusive church
beheld her regularly in its midst, and heard the audible admission
that she was a miserable sinner--a most touching confession for a
truly good Duchess to make. Then she befriended a bishop, who was not
too straight-laced, and induced him to preach a scientific sermon in
Lionel's church, of which Lionel, very nastily, did not approve. Oh,
it was a merry time, when the grapes were ripe and the first-fruits of
her ducal harvest were being gathered in. The Duchess of Pentland won
golden opinions even from the censorious. Things could not have been
better managed by the discarded fetish, and Leah admitted that in this
respectable orgy the birthday of her life had come.

During this meteoric career it surprised every one that she should
choose to retire suddenly. Fashion clamoured at her closed doors;
society journals wondered and lamented; individual friends expressed
themselves puzzled; and in print and conversation the freak of a
Duchess who chose to disappear was freely discussed. It was as
though the noonday sun should set unexpectedly. Leah's radiant orb had
blazed triumphantly for a few months, paling the lesser stars of
society, and then--had vanished. The Duke, when applied to for an
explanation, stated that she had gone abroad, because her health
was--hum--hum--hum. She crossed the Channel alone, too, which looked
odd. People began to talk and to invent reasons to explain the
inexplicable. But not even the most daring hinted at a connubial
disagreement. Jim would have stopped any such rumour at once with high
words. Not that it could arise, seeing that he thanked God publicly
every Sunday for possessing a wife whose price was far above rubies.
But whatever had happened, whatever might be the reason, it was
indisputable that the beautiful and wealthy and clever and popular
Duchess of Pentland had retired from the world in her heyday of social
success.

Lionel was the first to hear of her when she returned unexpectedly to
Firmingham, after a month's sojourn on the Continent. One day in the
chilly grey autumn weather he received a note asking him to call at
four o'clock, and went unthinkingly to pass through what he afterwards
remembered as the most painful hour of his life. He fancied, when
setting out, that Leah merely wished to see him about the Duke. It
might be that Jim, with the Old Adam leaven still working within, had
broken out again, and that Lionel was summoned to call the sinner a
second time to repentance. But the Duke, as he gathered from old
Colley, was vegetating at Hengist Castle. It was impossible that the
Old Adam could emerge from his penitential cell in so respectable and
moral a neighbourhood.

Leah received her cousin in the sitting-room of her Lady Jim days,
where they had twice talked seriously. Later on it appeared that she
had a special reason for selecting an apartment sanctified by the
vicar's endeavour to improve her into a moderately presentable angel.
It was a charming and tastefully decorated room, and the Duchess was
as tastefully decorated and as charming as her surroundings. She sat
in a deep chair by a brisk fire, dressed with that perfect choice of
colour and material which always distinguished her. The delicate blue
of her frock, and a selection of certain filigree silver ornaments,
matched marvellously with her splendid red hair and sapphire eyes.
Lionel noted an unusual pallor, but thought that he had never seen,
her look more lovely. Apparently she had been reading, for she dropped
her handkerchief over an open book on the small table at her elbow
when she rose to shake hands. He mechanically wondered at the trivial
action, and learned its significance later.

"So very kind of you to come, Lionel," said the Duchess, pressing his
hand cordially. "I know how busy you are with your parishioners."

"You are one of them," smiled the clergyman.

"At odd moments, certainly; but we globe-trot for our places of
worship nowadays. Sit down"; she indicated a convenient chair opposite
her own. "Now tell me the news of your small world. Is Joan quite
well?"

"Could not be better, considering the circumstances."

"I am so glad; when do you expect the happy event?"

"In a month, please God."

Leah looked pensively into the fire. "I hope it will be a boy."

"I shall be more than content with a girl. Why a boy particularly?"

"Why not, when an heir is so important? You succeed Jim, and a new
Marquis of Frith----"

"My dear Duchess, you and the Duke are young. There is little chance
of my succeeding. I may be congratulating you some day."

"No," cried Leah, almost fiercely; "such a thing can never be, thank
God."

Lionel stared. "Why 'thank God'?"

"Oh--er--I hardly know; of course, I should hate to be pestered with
children. The nursery is an obsolete institution here, and will remain
so, unless"--she hesitated--"unless Jim marries again."

"Duchess!"

"Why not Leah?"

"If it will please you. But why talk of Jim's marrying again, when you
are in the best of health and spirits?"

She shrugged indifferently. "One never knows, I might go first."

"I sincerely trust not."

"Does that imply that you wish me to be a real widow, after posing as
a sham one?"

"Of course not; but you talk so strangely."

"And so honestly. Remember, I have always paid you the compliment of
being plain even to rudeness."

Lionel tried to read her face, but in vain, and could not arrive at
the meaning of her apparently aimless conversation. The slanting rays
of sunset made a radiant glory round her as she half sat, half
reclined in the chair, and her beauty could bear even that merciless
test. Youth, health, money, charm, loveliness--with these desirable
blessings at her command, what else could she want?

"I do not quite understand," said the perplexed man.

"Understand what?" she asked absently; then became more alive to his
question. "Oh, my chatter. You will, before we part. I am no sphinx to
propose riddles."

"Every woman is a sphinx."

"Without a secret; that is why you men find us so difficult to
comprehend."

"I confess to the difficulty at this moment."

"What a complex mind I must have! Yet I am a very ordinary butterfly
of fashion; something with wings, at all events, though not entirely
an angel."

Her visitor laughed. "Am I to pay you a compliment, or rebuke you for
frivolity?"

"You can do both or either; the sweet first will counterbalance the
bitter last. But I sicken of compliments."

"Even when genuine?"

"They never are. Men say things they don't mean to women out of
traditional reverence for the exploded idea of the weaker vessel. When
you meet a child your first thought is to give it sweets; when you
talk with us the same thought is translated into polite lies. And we
never believe you--never," Leah assured him. "Plain or beautiful, vain
or humble, we price the words directly. In no case have I found them
to be of value."

"You make us out to be fools."

"One must be truthful at times. Of course, I always except you,
Lionel, as you are more man than parson."

"Cannot I be both?"

"Oh, yes, when miracles occur. Lately I heard of a parson who laboured
solitary and freezing amongst the snows of Labrador for a poor eighty
pounds a year. He was emphatically a man."

"And a parson," supplemented the vicar; "so, you see, miracles do
occur."

A warm colour crept into Leah's cheeks, and she looked piercingly at
her companion. "Do they? Nowadays, I mean. I am not using a mere
phrase, believe me. Honestly now, could those Gospel miracles occur in
this twentieth century?"

Lionel mused, and considered a careful reply. "Our Master was given
the Spirit without measure as a man because He was the Son of the Most
High; by that wisdom did He work His marvels. But the Apostles, in His
power, also prevailed over the apparently natural, showing signs and
wonders to the glory of the Risen Lord and His Father. 'With faith ye
can do all things,' said the blessed Jesus Himself. Yes, Leah, I
reverently believe that with purity, faith, and a humble trust in the
Father by the merits of the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost,
miracles could take place to-day."

"Then why don't they?" she asked abruptly.

The vicar, sighing, dropped into the high-pitched sing-song of the
pulpit. "A faithless and perverse generation----"

"A scientific generation, you mean. I don't believe--I can't
believe--and I won't believe. Prove the power of your Master. You have
faith; you are good; you----"

"No, no! You go too fast. I assuredly try to be good, but I am sadly
wanting in many ways. I have faith, but how weak, how faltering. Who
am I, to claim that the Lord should select me to reveal His strength
unto men? I can work no miracle, Leah. Would to God that I could, if
only to convince you!"

"Would to God that you could!" she echoed with something like a groan,
and the faint flush disappeared, like the dying out of a hope.

"Why do you, a sceptic, ask about these things?"

Leah, possessed by the spirit of the perverse, laughed maliciously.
"Jim is trying to be good; why should not I try also, since a wife is
bound to follow her husband, according to St. Paul, who by the way was
a bachelor? But," her mood shifted, "Jim has a tin-pot sort of faith
which is better than nothing. I have not, and so, like your
unbelieving Jews, require a sign."

Lionel became professionally interested, descrying intimations of a
changed heart. "I believe that you will yet find the Kingdom," he said
hopefully.

"Don't you make any such mistake," she retorted. "I have not yet set
out to find it, and never will, unless I see some of those wonders
about which you talk so glibly."

"But, believe me----"

"I do, though not to the extent of Bible magic. You hypnotise yourself
into crediting the impossible. I wish you could hypnotise me. Oh, I
wish--I wish--I wish!" she ended passionately.

"Faith is not hypnotism," argued Lionel; the word grated on his ear.

"It is--it is--it is!" Leah was vehement in her denial. "Science can
explain everything. Why do you come here to prate of miracles, when
you know in your own heart that such things never were and never can
be?"

"They were and they can be and they will be, while Christ reigneth,"
asserted the vicar, firmly; "nothing is impossible to God."

"Then call upon Him, and work your marvel."

"I am not worthy."

"You are not able, rather," and she taunted him as did Elijah the
priests of Baal, their god.

Kaimes wondered at her restless moods, and wondered still more when
she abruptly left the serious subject they were discussing--and on her
own initiative--to talk most frivolously.

"I have heard you preach," went on this weathercock, "and I am no more
to be persuaded than was Agrippa. You and your shadows"--she whiffed
these away. "Pouf! Let us talk of real things"; and a toss of her head
dismissed the spiritual for the purely temporal. "I had such a ripping
time this season," rattled on the nature set upon pomps and vanities.

"Leah, Leah! How can you?"

"Change so rapidly? Oh, my good man, I am a twirl-ma-gee woman, ever
seeking variety. Religious conversation is neither amusing nor
convincing. It's much more fun to talk of one's friends and abuse
their failings."

"I decline to join in," said Lionel, dryly, and feeling nonplussed.

"Because you have no sense of humour. What a dull time of it Joan must
have, poor child!"

"She does not complain," he objected stiffly.

"Oh, Lord, what is the use of complaining! I never whimper about Jim,
though his goodness is even duller than his badness. 'I have tried
George drunk, I have tried George sober'"--she was quoting an epigram
of Charles II.--"'and there is nothing in George.'"

"You are unnecessarily personal," rebuked Kaimes, annoyed.

"That's right. Tramp on your little corns and you howl."

He intimated that he desired to leave. "My time is valuable."

"Oh, I know yon are a millionaire of seconds and hours. How
disagreeable you are, when I want to be amused!"

"You have just informed me that I am dull," he reminded her pointedly.

"So you are; all honest men are dull. Why, I don't know, unless it is
that honesty and wit match as ill as beauty and brains. Now don't look
at your watch again. I have something to tell you that will make your
clerical hair stand on end."

What could one do with such a whirlwind woman? The vicar replaced his
watch and shrugged resignedly. She was what she had always been,
freakish and uncertain; but on this occasion more so than usual. An
April lady, whimsical and irresponsible, decidedly rude, and
aggravatingly amusing. But Kaimes instinctively felt that at the back
of these volleying drifts of smalltalk lurked something serious, which
she feared to handle. Hoping that in time it might be manifested to
his intelligence, he waited patiently, while Leah scrambled on
verbosely in her gabble of nothings.

"You need a London month to pull you together. Dull country, dull man;
dull man, awful bore. Get a parish in the West End; you'll have
howling larks converting Dives and Jezebel of the drawing-room."

"I do not look upon conversion as a lark."

"I do, especially with Jim. Oh, Lord, to think that he of all people
should turn goody-goody. You are pleased, of course; the sight of the
lost black sheep trotting home to fodder to the fold is----"

"I really cannot listen to this talk," said Lionel, rising quickly.

"Yes, you can. I'll shock you more before I've done."

Kaimes resumed his seat blankly. "But your reason?"

Leah jumped up as her visitor sat down, and addressed nothing in
particular.

"He asks for reason, and from a woman," she exclaimed. "So like that
lame Lord Esbrook; he always asks what he should not and what he is
never likely to get."

"Reason from women?"

"And from men, who have still less to spare. But that's his way. Have
you met Lord Esbrook? Such a funny walk as he has. Dot and carry
one--wooden leg, you know; dot and carry one--just like this only much
worse"; and Leah limped the length of the room, mimicking an
extraordinary gait so cleverly that Lionel laughed openly.

"Though you shouldn't mock at people's infirmities," he coughed.

"Why not? Esbrook's a holy show, and with the spite of the cripple, he
spares no one's feelings. He's the cracked black pot snarling at the
kettles he can never hope to be, with his dot and carry one, dot and
carry one"; and back she came swinging and grunting with provoking
cleverness.

In her gyrations--it seemed from her imitations that Lord Esbrook
gyrated--she overturned the table upon which rested the covered book.
Leah pounced to pick up the volume, as did Kaimes, out of courtesy.
When he had set the table on its legs he could scarcely refrain from
glancing casually at the book. It's exterior was familiar.

"The Bible!" exclaimed an amazed man.

Leah flung herself into the chair, laughing noisily. "Oh, what a
face!" she mocked, pointing a jeering finger. "Look at yourself, do."

"Were--you--reading the Bible?" asked the vicar, too astonished to
note the poor attempt she made to force humour.

"Why not?" said she, defiantly, but with flushes and quick breaths.

"You only mock."

"The opportunity is so alluring," was her reply. "There's such an
awful lot of rot in that history of the Jews. And hundreds of
impossibilities. Here!" She seized the Bible and rapidly swept the
pages. "What was I reading when you entered?" The thin leaves flew and
flickered beneath her fingers. "Oh yes! Something quite too absurd in
Matthew."

"St. Matthew."

"Mister St. Matthew, if you will. There"; she presented the book; "you
read so beautifully--really you do, without flattery."

"I will not read for you to mock."

Her face flashed into crude anger. "Read," she commanded harshly.

The vicar would have declined again, but that his eye fell on the
verses she had indicated. A memory of their earlier conversation,
coupled with her unnecessary vehemence, made him obey without further
hesitation. It might be that here was the key to the problem of her
jerky speech. His mellow voice rose like the music of a solemn bell,
and the glorious words rolled majestically through the room.

"_When He was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed
Him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped Him, saying, Lord,
if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth His hand,
and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his
leprosy was cleansed_."

"And immediately his leprosy was cleansed," breathed the Duchess,
gripping the arms of her chair to lean forward. "Why not 'her'
leprosy?"

Lionel laid down the sacred volume. "It was a man who came to ask
mercy of our Lord," said he, obtusely.

Leah threw herself back in the chair with the pettish cry of a
misunderstood child. "Oh, you fool!"

Something in her voice startled him; yet he was far from gathering her
meaning. "What is it?" he demanded, entirely bewildered.

There was no light in her eyes now; from luminous sapphires they had
become pebbles, dull orbs of lapis-lazuli. When she spoke her voice
creaked and wheezed "If your Master lived to-day, I would go to
Palestine!" she said, looking very directly at him.

"What on earth for?" he asked blankly.

"Can you not understand?"

Her look was that of Medusa, and flickering lights came and went in
her half-lifeless eyes. Their glare, rather than the toneless notes of
her voice, made him faintly understand. The chosen passage out of St.
Matthew, taken in conjunction with her earlier chatter of miracles,
and her late reference to Palestine, engendered in his brain a
horrible, a terrible, an impossible thought. And yet----

"What are you talking about?" he asked harshly.

The cry of a soul on fire broke on his ears. "You brute, when I suffer
so! Does it need words?"

"Does what need words?"

She dashed her hand on the open page of the Bible. "This--this!"

"Augh!" He rose and sat down, with cold hands and a white face. The
meaning of what she meant crashed like the blow of a bludgeon, and his
brain spun to the shock "Leah!" he heard himself say, in a far-away
voice like a telephone whisper. Then he stopped to stare at the quiet
woman who sat upright, with rigid features and tightly clasped hands.
"Leah," he muttered again, and some indefinable feeling made his hair
crisp at the roots.

"Yes!" That was all she said, and her lips hardly moved in the saying.

Kaimes looked aimlessly round the room, and noted the pattern of the
window-curtains. Only the whistling of the coals, spouting smoke and
jetting flame, broke the stillness. His eyes returned to her face,
fair and stainless. "Impos--s--sible!" he jerked, his voice entirely
beyond control. "Im----" then his nerves vibrated and his skin crept.

"Three doctors in London, five doctors abroad, assured me that it is
not impossible--unfortunately."

They were like two pale ghosts sitting in the shadows. Said one ghost
to the other: "But have you--are you a----?" His tongue refused to
form either terrible word.

Leah unexpectedly flung up her arms with a scream, then brought two
shaking hands across her mouth to stifle that wild note of human pain.
Right and left, up and down, did she look, as though to be certain
that no one was within earshot but the vicar. "It will never do to let
the servants hear," said the rapid action. Lionel's benumbed brain
could not yet take in wholly the appalling truth--if truth it was. The
leper dropped her hands and looked at him heavily.

"You lying devil," said Leah, slowly.

"What? what? what?" babbled Kaimes, incoherently.

She groaned and rocked with hands palm to palm between her knee. "I
will, be thou clean; I will, be thou clean." Over and over again did
she moan the words, till they bored into the listener's brain.

"God have mercy!" murmured the man, trying to be a man. The creeping
paralysis of the horror almost struck him dumb. But he managed by a
violent effort to wet his lips with a stiff tongue, and made it form
certain words: "Are you sure of this?"

"Three doctors," went on the Duchess, rocking and droning as Demetrius
did aforetime--"three doctors, five doctors, eight doctors in all.
They said the same thing--ugh!--such a beastly thing! It was the
truth, though. Doctors never lie like parsons. And that Book with its
falsehoods--that----" She lunged forward without rising, and grabbing
the Bible pitched it into the fire. Lionel snatched it from the
flames; Leah struck it from his hands; and then ensued a silent
struggle, uncanny, savage, in which some leaves were torn. All at once
she relaxed her grip and lay back crying quietly. "It's a shame, a
shame!" she wept softly; "just when everything was going on so well.
And it can't be cured; all the money in the world can't cure me. I
must die--in bits"; her voice soared shrilly, and she crouched, as
though being beaten. "Ugh! That kiss, that beastly kiss!"

"Leah, how did you get this disease?"

The woman took no notice, but sprang up, as though moved by springs,
flinging wide her arms, and looking upward in wild rebellion. "I
won't die--I won't. I refuse to give in--I refuse"; she tore up and
down the room, speaking in angry undertones, as one always mindful of
possible listeners. "I have always had my own way!" was her whispered
argument--"always--always; why can't I have it now? There can be
nothing up there; no, no--there can't be. If He does exist He would
not have let me go so long on my own. I am strong--I have never met
any one stronger. I must win--I have always won. I will win!" her
voice rose tyrannically. "I am myself; who can be stronger than
myself? And yet this thing"--a strong shudder shook her into
weakness--"this vile--vile---- Ugh! ugh! I believe there must be
Something. Can you tell me, you--you who assume to know the secrets of
the stars?"

She lurched forward in a frenzy of deadly fear, cannoned against
Lionel, and dragged him down into his chair, clasping his knees, and
knocking her forehead against them. "Where is your Master?" she
whimpered. "Tell Him I'm sorry--really I am sorry. He may cure me
then, as He cured that man long ago. Gentle Jesus--the children call
Him so; He can't be cruel to me--to me. He can't be cruel to any one,
so they say--ah, they say, they say; but how do I know? It's not true,
it isn't true, and yet if it was--if it---- Lionel----" She broke off
with the squall of a terrified child, hiding her eyes pitifully. "I'll
be good--I'll be good, if only--only He will do this! It's a little
thing--oh, a very little thing. And you said that He could--that He,
your Master, I mean. Oh! oh! oh!" With sobbing breath she unwound her
arms and fell back beating the carpet with open palms. Murmurings went
rhythmically with the padding sound. "I want to be clean; I want to be
clean; I want to be clean."

Kaimes tried to lift her. "Let me summon help."

With a bound she was on her feet, pushing him back. "Do that and I
kill you," she panted, clenching her hands and facing him furiously.
"No one knows but these doctors--yes, and Katinka, and that fiend
Demetrius. Strange also. If I had Strange here"-- she hammered with
closed fists on the vicar's shoulders--"I would cut him into bits; I
would blind him somehow; I would--I would--oh, what would I not do?
Why couldn't he leave that infected beast to die in Siberia? Oh,
the--the--the----" She poured forth a torrent of words, which made the
listener grow hot and cold with shame. Then again she collapsed as the
chill of a deadly fear struck at her heart. "I don't want to die--I
don't want to die!" and against the wall she rocked with arms held
crosswise over her eyes, swinging, ever swinging.

The scene was like a nightmare; but by this time Lionel had the grip
of his emotions. "Leah," he said firmly, and advancing close to the
writhing creature, "you must tell your husband; you must----"

Out came her arms with a circular swing, and struck him fair across
the eyes. "Jim doesn't know; Jim must never know."

He was almost blinded, but persisted. "Leah, something must be done."

Her voice sank, and with it her rage. "Something must be done," said
she, faintly--"something shall be done, and--soon."

"What do you mean?" he asked, half under his breath, and half catching
at her intention.

She took no notice. "Sit down, please!" said Leah, quietly, and Kaimes
obeyed, since to summon assistance would only be to precipitate a
still more dreadful scene. The Duchess looked into the mirror and
arranged her hair; also she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, and
smoothed her wrist-cuffs. When she did speak it was in the smooth
voice of a society hostess asking a visitor if he took sugar in his
tea. "I have made a fool of myself, Lionel. But you must admit that I
am rather severely tried just now."

"Oh, you poor soul!" His tone and look were pitiful.

"Reserve your sympathy till you hear what I have to say. But first
tell me honestly, can Christ cure me?"

"Yes--if it is His Will."

"Then let Him."

"You must have Faith."

"Faith in what?"

"In His power and Will to heal."

"How can I believe, when I do not believe?"

"He died for you on the Cross."

"He did not. That was purely a political matter because the Jews
feared the Romans. I have read Strauss; I have read Renan; the four
Gospels also: you can't puzzle me. He was a good man, a very good
man--quite a saint, if you will. But--the Son of God?" She shook her
head with a hard frown of disbelief.

Lionel was at his wit's end. "Then you cannot be cured?"

"No"; she looked at him steadily, an awful smile curving the corners
of her mouth. "I thought you would fail me at the last."

"But how can I----?"

"You can't, so there's no more to be said." She sat down with a little
sigh. "Dear me, how very hot this room is! Would you mind opening the
window?"

Kaimes did not move. "Leah, go to bed, and let me send for one of
those doctors you consulted."

"Useless! useless!" She waved him aside calmly. "They have spoken. I
know the worst; I am prepared to face the worst. Are you? Hold your
tongue," she added peremptorily, as he opened his mouth. "Listen!"

From beginning to end did she relate the whole fraud--the sham death,
the stolen money, the betrayal, and the punishment of the kiss. Her
voice was perfectly calm, her posture easy, and her self-control
admirable. The listener grew white and red, became nervous and angry,
quivered with disgust, recoiled with loathing, as she unfolded the
brutal tale of her sin and treachery. Leah spared him no detail,
however painful; she even made herself out to be worse than she really
was--if that were possible. From the buying of Demetrius by that
butterfly kiss in the picture-gallery, to the revenge of Demetrius in
that stuffy cabin, when she struggled in the arms of one who had been
what she now was, she related the whole without a blush, without a
tremor, in a quiet, level voice, unmoved, and utterly shameless. The
horror of her position seemed to remove her from the region of human
emotions and morals. It was the unveiling of original evil.

Lionel did not interrupt, but closed his eyes with a sick feeling as
she drew to the end.

"I first noticed that something was wrong when my hands burned as I
washed them. I thought nothing of it at the time; but the feeling
became so painful that I saw my doctor. He said--well, you can guess
what he said. I consulted another, and another: the same diagnosis. I
went abroad, but the doctors in Germany and France told me the same
thing. I knew it was true. I felt in my heart it was true. Ugh!" She
paused. "There is no cure--none, none." Then she finished, with a
nervous titter, "Pleasant for me, isn't it?"

"Don't!" gasped the vicar, leaning his head on his hand, and much too
qualmish to speak.

"Oh, you needn't look like that. I have to suffer, not you. I kept
wondering how I got the beastly thing, and although I fancied it might
be that kiss, I could not be quite sure. Katinka enlightened me--she
was always a good-natured girl. After the death of that little
reptile, she returned to England and watched me. Seeing that I went to
doctors--she must have watched very closely--and then abroad, she
wrote a letter--such a nasty, spiteful letter. But I always thought
Katinka was a cat. Would you like to----?"

"No, no; I have heard enough."

"And you call yourself a man--pooh! You must hear. I learned from the
letter that Demetrius contracted the--the--well, what he suffered
from, amongst the natives of Kamchatka. He intended first to show me
up; but when that horrid girl told him how she had hurt my mouth, he
knew that by a kiss he could--ahr-r-r! He was a doctor, you see, and
the skin being broken, it was easy for him, knowing what he did, to do
what he wanted--the brute! That was why he kissed so hard, and----"

"Stop! stop!"

"It is beastly, isn't it? That's all, I think."

She was examining her finger-nails when next Lionel stole a glance at
her. He scarcely knew what to say. Her treachery and the result of her
treachery were both abominable. That a beautiful woman, gently born
and bred, should sin so vilely seemed incredible. For beautiful she
was, sitting there calmly under the uplifted sword of Azrael, the
Angel of Death; and vile she confessed herself to be. Yet he could
hardly accept either the physical degradation or the moral turpitude.

"You may be mistaken, after all," he stammered vaguely.

"Because I am not an object," she replied, with a shrug. "How like a
child you are to require proof! I don't intend to become an object, I
can tell you."

"But if there is no cure----"

"There is another way. Of course, it is disagreeable, but what is one
to do in such straits?"

The vicar guessed her meaning, and violently threw off the weakness
with which her story had infected his manhood. "I forbid you to heap
crime upon crime," said he, firmly and insistently.

"I shall do what I like. Do not dictate to me, if you please."

"But God----"

"I don't believe in God."

"You do; you must. Does not this shameful punishment which has
overtaken you in the hour of triumph declare the anger of a great and
terrible God."

"No!" Her expression was mulish.

"Woman! woman! Kneel and ask for mercy."

"I won't ask for mercy when I'm being treated so badly. Never! never!
Just when things were going so smoothly, too; the money coming in by
the bushel, and Demetrius out of the way. I call it a shame; it's
mean, spiteful, cruel. I intended to have such a jolly time, and
now--now----" Her voice faltered and broke.

She swung with a groan to one side of the chair, hiding her face and
breathing heavily. That deadly fear of the inevitable would grip her,
do what she would.

"Leah"--Kaimes' voice shook a trifle--"God is very good to you."

Her eyes stared at him bleakly. "Very good?"

"We are put into this world, not for the pampering of the flesh, but
that we may learn through trouble how to become more spiritual. Our
souls are of God, and to God they must return, rising through much
tribulation to His necessary perfection. Sorrows are sent for the
flesh to bear; not as punishments, but as lessons to be learned. Of
our vices, says St. Augustine, we can frame a ladder to ascend
heavenward, if we but tread them beneath our feet. This you have never
known."

"And I do not know it now."

"From your dreadful trouble will come the knowledge; in this way alone
can humility come. God, out of loving pity for your unbending pride,
which prevents the Holy Spirit from entering your heart, has beaten
you to your knees. On your knees, then, ask for mercy, for light, for
purification of your unclean soul. God's staff, which He gives to all
in life's pilgrimage, has changed into a rod. He gave you all things,
and you used His gifts to glorify the flesh. Now in His infinite love
has He sent trouble----"

"I've brought that upon myself."

"For your amendment it was permitted that you should do so. Out of
your pleasant vices have you made whips to lash yourself. The wages of
sin is death; you have sinned, and the wages--oh, Leah, Leah, bitterly
cruel as it may seem to you, I rejoice that the wages should be so
paid."

"You are a Job's comforter, I must say," said the Duchess, sullenly.

"Because I can see how this tribulation of the flesh can save your
soul alive. God might have struck you dead in your wickedness, and
with justice, for your wilful sin. Instead of doing so, He has given
you a lingering disease, that you should be brought to acknowledge His
power and also have time to repent."

"There is nothing to repent of."

"Shame! shame! Even from a worldly point of view you have sinned
grossly; how much blacker, then, are your deeds in God's sight! But
they can be made white; the past can be wiped out by sincere sorrow."

Leah twisted her hands above her head with a cry of impotent rage.
"How can I repent, when I do not even feel sorry?"

"You will not ask Christ to help you. Repentance is a gift, as is
Faith. He will give both, and His undying Love, if you will but
confess your sin."

"I have done so--to you."

"Who am powerless. Confess it to Christ; weep as did Mary at His
wounded feet. Hard as is your heart, He will melt it; soiled as is
your soul, He will cleanse it. Now--now, when human aid is vain, now
is the appointed time. Repent and be saved!"

"If I try to, will He--will He cure met"

"That question I cannot, dare not answer. His mercy is infinite."

"You say that to me, knowing what I suffer."

"I say it to you who suffer. In no other way could the Spirit have
brought you to the mercy-seat."

"He has not brought me now," she persisted obstinately.

Lionel fell on his knees and caught her restless hands.

"Oh, your poor, sinful soul, for which Christ died!" he cried
passionately; "to whom can you go but to God? Doctors cannot cure you;
He can, if it be His will. He may even make your flesh clean."

"Ah! And that question you declined to answer a minute or two back.
Besides, you denied that miracles could take place."

"I did not. No one ever came in vain to our Blessed Lord, when He
walked the earth some two thousand years ago. As was His power then,
so is it now. He loved in those days, He loves now. Sitting on God's
right hand, He is ready to succour the vilest. His arm is not
shortened, His pity is not exhausted. In mercy He may even cure you of
this dreadful disease, as He cured the afflicted man we read of. Only
acknowledge that God is mightier than you are; only bow to the rod,
only admit your sin, only cry for pardon."

"If He will cure me----" she began, wavering.

"That you must leave to His love and wisdom. Cure you He may; permit
you to suffer, He may see fit. But save your soul, He can. That much I
can swear to."

"I want this horrible thing cured," she cried passionately.

"To continue in your sins? To soil your soul anew?"

"No! no! If I repent----"

"Repentance includes submission. God may not see fit to cure you; it
may be your punishment--and I think it is--to bear this woeful cross,
which if rightly borne may lead you to the light of lights. The flesh!
The flesh! You but think of the flesh, of the passing world, of the
vanities of life, of the enjoyment of the senses. From these things
God would lead you away to contemplate spiritual realities, and the
appointed path has been made known. Bear your cross--oh, my dear, bear
your cross, and endure to the end that you may be saved. Terrible as
it may seem, this evil, whence good will arise, has removed you from
temptation. If you live secluded----"

"Dying piecemeal," she cried, in a frenzy of anger, and wrenched away
her hands. "No, no; I will not live. I will die--die. At least I can
do that."

"As did Judas! Leah, if you cannot bear your punishment in the flesh,
how will you endure it in the spirit? Live for Christ, and what
matters the world?"

"Everything! everything! I know what I am; I do not know what I may
be. Here--in this tangible world--we are safe--safe!"

"From God? Can you say that, when His hand has struck you down? I tell
you, poor sinner, that thus does He show His mercy. As is your crime,
so must be your punishment. But Christ can pardon your iniquities, and
Christ will, if you only plead for mercy and for grace."

Leah rose, crimson with rage. "You'll drive me mad. I don't want your
spiritual life, your next world of shadows and moonshine. Give me
life--life--life!"

The cry of the flesh was so insistent, so futile, so blind in its
desire, that Lionel shuddered. Still on his knees, he began a fervent
prayer. The miserable woman walked rebelliously up and down the room,
fighting against the conviction now slowly being driven home to her
understanding, that He whom she had mocked and defied was indeed the
Most High God. But she still fought against a submission she knew well
would have to be made. Beg for mercy she would not: her heart could
not feel, her intelligence could not grasp. But, somehow, she knew. A
dreadful thing had reduced her to impotence, and the ego could not
battle against the Something it had hitherto flouted, but now
furiously admitted might exist.

There remained but one thing to do, but one dark way to take. Do it
and take it she would. But Lionel more than suspected her intention.
Lionel would thwart her, and she would be compelled to live--live on,
an object of disgust and pity. "No! no!" was her inward cry, as the
imploring voice of the vicar rose and fell, and died away in a last
tremulous Amen. For the last time, therefore, did she set her wits to
plot for the ego.

"Lionel," said she, hesitatingly, "will you send for Jim?"

The vicar's face lighted up. He saw in this request what she meant him
to see, a sign of yielding. "You will let me tell him?"

Leah nodded. "There is a doctor in Vienna," she whispered, inventing
recklessly with the cunning of one driven to bay; "he has found out a
cure, I hear. If Jim will take me over----"

"I'll telegraph to Hengist Castle at once," cried Kaimes, making for
the door impetuously.

"And come back to dinner," said she, following, "I can't pass the
evening alone."

"I shall come."

"But you won't frighten me any more with this religious talk?"

Lionel pressed her hand sadly. "I have done what I could, Leah. Only
the Holy Spirit can bring home conviction to your heart. Try and
pray."

"Yes," assented the Duchess, submissively; "it is all that is left."

"Then the better part, which cannot be taken away, is left."

He went away quite deceived, since she had suggested the Viennese
physician so calmly. He thought that she still hoped desperately, and
for all he knew the hope might be fulfilled, seeing the present-day
resources of science. Certainly he never dreamed how she had
hoodwinked him, and so sped on his errand of mercy, leaving behind him
a woman too broken to exult in the success of her final piece of
trickery.

It was all over. Man could do nothing; God would do nothing. As
Demetrius had been smitten for the crime she had induced him to
commit, so was she being punished for the evil she had called into
being. Lionel had talked nonsense, of course; but he left behind him a
feeling in her mind that the God he worshipped did exist. How the
belief had come into her heart, she could not say; but it was
certainly there. Try as she might, with all the strength of her
brilliant intellect, she knew that never again could she be an
atheist. God existed to her comprehension at last. But the
newly-conceived Deity was not the Father of love and light. Rather did
He appear an omnipotent tyrant, who had driven her to bad courses by
giving her tastes she was unable to satisfy, and who now punished her
for acting as the nature He had given her dictated. She was like a
mouse in the claws of a cat, and could no more escape than could the
tormented little beast. Only to the height of acknowledging that
Something much stronger than herself existed could she rise; and her
submission was as that of Caliban to Prospero. Wrenched violently from
the egotistic wrappings of her soul, she--the true self, the immortal
spirit--stood naked and shamed, yet defiant. She submitted, because
only submission was left. But all her flesh shouted furiously against
its victor.

Then, again, as the tormented soul strove to overcome the lower
material self, did she recall Lionel's words. God was love, he
declared, and in love had God broken her shield of self, snapped her
sword of desire. Certainly, now that this world could do nothing for
her, she would be forced to seek the other. There she might learn how
to rise from darkness into light. That the spiritual existed she was
now reluctantly convinced; that a study of its meaning would bring her
peace she could not be certain. Of course, it was early days yet. She
had gained a great step by the admission that God reigned, even though
He had proved it to her so cruelly. It might be that by endless
striving she would learn something of His love before Death ended her
intolerable sufferings. God ordered her to fly; was it worth while to
trust to Him for wings?

The struggle of the soul wavering between hell and heaven might have
ended in the victory of the latter, and Leah might have consented with
bitter tears to bear the cross laid upon her shrinking shoulders. But
while wearily pacing the room a chance glance showed her in the mirror
that beauty of which she had been, and was, so proud. Leaning her arms
on the mantelpiece, she examined every detail lovingly and long. Could
she bear to see that gradually disappear? Could she accept life as a
Thing and not as a Being? Those blue eyes would grow dull and animal;
that glorious hair would drop off; that complexion of cream and roses
would--would---- Ugh! ugh!

"No! no! no!" The rebellious cry of the flesh ascended to the stars.
"It must never be--never."

All that she knew herself to be revolted against the slow wasting
agony that would most surely come, to reduce that splendour of her
beautiful body to the dust, dishonoured and shamed. To save herself
from such infamy it but needed an overdose of chloral. Then in the
pride of her loveliness she would pass away painlessly, without
disfigurement, triumphant in a minor degree, at least. With all the
indomitable strength of a will that had been only thwarted by Him who
had created that will, did she resolve to snatch this one poor
laurel-leaf from the Almighty Victor. Turning from the mirror, she
felt that her mind was steeled, that Self was not entirely defeated.
After all, her unconquerable will would win.

"To-night," she whispered to her shivering soul, "when I go to bed. An
overdose of chloral, and then, when I awaken----" She stopped, with
the chills of death at her heart. "Oh," was her despairing admission;
"You are the stronger!"

It was the cry of the flesh making sullen submission. In vain did the
soul piteously beg that its tabernacle might yet hold it a little
while, for the purging of its sin. The flesh would not hear. Beaten,
conquered, shamed, tormented, its petty triumph could yet be obtained
in this hour of defeat. And the terrified soul, sobbing unheeded,
waited for the rapidly approaching hour which would send it forth
disembodied--whither?

CHAPTER XXXV

"We regret to announce to our readers the unexpected demise of the
Duchess of Pentland at Firmingham, Essex. According to the Rev. Lionel
Kaimes, who dined with her Grace on the evening of her death, she was
in the very best of health and spirits. The unfortunate lady retired
at a comparatively early hour, and was found dead in the morning by
her maid. A brief examination proved that death was due to an overdose
of chloral, which her Grace was in the habit of taking when suffering
from sleeplessness. The Duke of Pentland, who was expected at
Firmingham, arrived shortly after the painful discovery, to be greeted
by the disastrous intelligence.

"The loss of this highly popular lady will be greatly felt in high
circles. Her beauty and wit were exceptional, and only to be surpassed
by her truly kind heart. It may be well said that she lived to make
others happy. To the unfortunate her purse was always open, and to the
afflicted her soothing presence was a welcome relief. Again and again
did she sacrifice herself in the cause of charity; and in many ways
unknown to the public did she do good by stealth. Her graceful
presence will be much missed at various great functions during the
coming winter season; but it is the poor and needy who will most
keenly feel the loss of one whose large heart was ever ready to aid
them in trouble.

"Much commiseration is expressed for the Duke of Pentland, who was
most tenderly attached to his beautiful consort. A brilliant star has
disappeared from the social firmament; but what is more lamentable, a
noble, religious, charitable lady has gone, leaving a place which can
never be filled. The funeral, which will take place at Firmingham next
Tuesday, will doubtless be largely attended by those who loved her and
knew her worth. The world can ill spare such a one, who illustrated in
her conduct and qualities the highest attributes of womanhood. She was
a great lady, a true, tender woman, a sincere friend, and a model
wife. What words could better befit her untimely grave than that
eulogy on Dorcas set forth in the Acts: 'This woman was full of good
works and almsdeeds which she did'?"

FINIS

End of Project Gutenberg's Lady Jim of Curzon Streeet, by Fergus Hume