CHAPTER XXIX
"It is yourself I want," said Austin Ambrose.
Violet looked at him for a moment as if she had not understood the purport of his words, then she raised herself on her elbow, and laughed.
"What do you say? Is this a jest? If so, it is in rather bad taste, don't you think?"
He looked at her steadily.
"Have I the appearance of a man who jests?" he breathed.
Her face paled.
"If it isn't a jest, what is it?" she demanded, querulously. "Why do you come at this time of night and say absurd things like – like that?"
"Is it so absurd, do you think? Consider. Violet, have you been dreaming all these months? You should know me well enough to feel that I am not a mere straw to be idly blown hither and thither, not a man likely to waste his life doing service for no requital. Let me take you back to the past. Do you remember the days and months and years I waited on you like a slave? Do you think it was done for nothing, with no hope of reward?"
His eyes shone with fierce determination, his whole manner proclaimed eloquently the dominant idea which had actuated him through the past, which was now so near its fulfillment.
"I never deceived you. Think! remember! Is it so hard to go back? I suppose it must be so! You are now the Countess of Ferrers, Blair's wife; you have obtained all you craved for, and, like all those who rise upon the shoulders or the hearts of some faithful friend and slave, you forget the aid by which alone you rose!"
He drew a little nearer, and stood upright before her, his face made almost handsome by the intensity of its expression.
"Violet, do you remember the day I knelt at your feet and poured out the love with which my heart was burning? I was no schoolboy, nor mere fortune-hunter. I loved you with an all-absorbing passion; I should have loved you if you had been a poor girl selling flowers in the streets, and I would have knelt to you if you had been such an one as humbly as I knelt to Violet Graham, the wealthy heiress, with all the world at her beck and nod! And you! – how did you treat me? Look back! You scarcely deigned to listen, and when at last you consented to waste a few minutes in listening to my prayer – ah! and what a prayer it was; the cry of a man begging for his life! – you answered me with a few half-contemptuous words, a smile wholly scornful, and a haughty request that I would never again so far forget myself. Forget myself! Violet, as I left you that day, I swore that if I lived I would win you; that every gift nature had given me, every talent I could acquire, should be pressed into the service of my oath, and that sooner or later I would come to you – not kneeling, as the humble suppliant, the slave craving for a boon at the hand of a tyrant, but as one having the power to command and exact that which he wanted."
"You – you must be mad, Austin!" she murmured, struggling with the terror his words produced on her.
"Wait!" he said, with the same deadly intentness. "Wait, as I waited! I knew that you had set your heart upon marrying Blair. Blair was in my hands. He trusted me implicitly; through him I thought that I might, perchance, gain a hold upon you. For days, through sleepless nights, I set myself to find some way of trapping you, some net which should catch and hold you fast. I knew that I could bring Blair to your feet sooner or later, but that was not enough, for, by doing so, I should lose you altogether. Violet, they talk of fate. If there be such a thing, then Fate took pity on me and worked on my side. It was Fate more than I, myself, which weaved the plot whereby I stand to-night before you as a victor, not kneeling, as I once knelt, your slave!"
He paused and smiled down at her, with the air of a man confident of his victim.
"You are tired, and it is time you got some rest. We start from here by five o'clock this morning. I will have a carriage waiting by the cathedral – but I need not trouble you with the arrangements. All that you have to do is to be ready; and I have no fear that you will disobey me."
She rose and looked at him with a flushed face and scornful eyes.
"Austin, you have been drinking," she said.
He started, but instantly recovered himself and shook his head slowly.
"It is the most charitable conjecture I can form," she said. "You have either taken too much wine, or you have lost your reason. I admit that I am indebted to you, but I will find some means of discharging that debt. I am rich – don't be offended – and an ambitious man like yourself needs money. You shall have what you require; more, Blair shall exert all his influence and send you to Parliament – you will shine there, and may rise to any height you like. But, mind, I will do nothing if you do not go at once, and promise me never to come near me again. If you will not promise – why, then I will place the matter in my husband's hands." She paused.
"Have you finished?" he asked calmly, almost gently.
"Yes," she said, "only I may add that I think you know my threat is no idle one. Blair will know how to avenge an insult paid to his wife!"
His face grew hard, and his eyes dark with a flash of hate and anger.
"An insult paid to his wife! Yes! But one paid to Miss Violet Graham is another matter!"
"What do you mean?" she demanded, scornfully. "I am not Violet Graham, I am his wife."
"You are Violet Graham, but you are not Blair's wife; you are not the Countess of Ferrers, my dear!"
She looked at him, the blood rushing to her face at the contemptuous familiarity of the last two words.
"Leave the room, sir!" she exclaimed, raising her hand and pointing to the door. "You have abused my patience; go, or you will indeed compel me to forget your 'services,' and make it necessary that my paid servants should use force!"
He laughed softly, and his eyes glowed with admiration.
"Violet, I swear that every instant you make me love you more passionately! I see you think I lied when I said you were not Blair's wife, is it not so?"
"I know that you lied!" she retorted, as calmly as she could.
"How little you know me," he said, gravely. "Do you think I am so great a fool as to make such an assertion for the mere sake of making it?"
"If I am not Blair's wife, who is?" she demanded, as if humoring him.
"Come," he said, with a smile; "that is better, because it is more practical and business-like. Continue this tone, my dear Violet, and we shall speedily arrive at an understanding. You want to know who is Blair's wife? Certainly. It is a young lady who was Margaret Hale, but who became the Viscountess of Leyton and Countess of Ferrers."
She started, but it was only at the sound of Margaret's name.
"Margaret Hale! The girl – "
"Exactly. The girl he fell in love with at Leyton Court. What an excellent memory you find when you need it."
"And you say he married her? Oh, spare your breath!" she broke off, with a contemptuous gesture.
"Thanks; I will," he said. "Permit me to give you ocular proof. Here is the certificate of the ceremony; not a copy, please to observe: not a mere copy, but the original itself. The ceremony, as you will see, was performed at a charming old church, in a rural and secluded spot called Sefton. The date is set forth in plain figures, together with all the particulars even the most exacting lawyer could require."
She took the certificate, very much as poor Margaret had taken the false one from Lottie Belvoir, and looked at it with dazed eyes, then she crushed it in her hand, and looked up at him as a dumb animal looks up at the man who has struck it.
"Married to her! – married to her!" she murmured; "and he did not tell me!" A spasm of jealousy shot through her. "Then she was his wife?"
"She was, most certainly," he assented, watching her.
"But what has that to do with you and your plot?" she demanded, raising herself after a moment and facing him contemptuously. "This – this marriage is a matter between me and Blair. This certificate is not a forgery – I believe that."
He looked at her steadily.
"Thanks. You do me that credit, and safely. Of one thing you may be convinced, Violet, and that is, that I will not speak one false word to you to-night. By truth, and truth alone, I will win you. Do not doubt any one thing I tell you, for I swear that it is true!"
"I – I believe you," she said, almost involuntarily. "I believe this marriage took place, but what of it? The girl is dead. I am Blair's wife, and the offer" – she shuddered again – "the vile offer you made he will protect me from."
"Blair is not your husband, for Margaret Hale, the Countess of Ferrers, is alive!" he said.
He did not thunder it at her, nor hiss it as the serpent he resembled might have done; but he spoke the words almost gently and with a serene and complacent calmness.
She sprung to her feet and confronted him.
"What? Stop – " and her hands went out toward him as if to shut from her senses any further words of his.
"I must go on," he said. "It is true. Margaret Hale is alive. Do you doubt me? Look in my face," and he drew a step nearer.
She looked at him with all her anguished soul in her eyes, then she shrank back.
"She is here, here in Naples. An hour hence, any moment, they may meet, Blair and she, and he will recognize her. Do you think that, after that, you have much chance of remaining as the wife of the Earl of Ferrers? You know best whether his heart has forgotten his allegiance to his first wife, his real wife, his present wife; for you are nothing whatever to him, remember. You are not the Countess of Ferrers, but simply – Miss Violet Graham!"
She sat staring at him, her hand clinched on the certificate.
"Why – why did she leave him? Does he know that she is alive?" she said hoarsely.
He laughed, and drawing a chair nearer, sat astride it and facing her.
"No, he thinks her dead," he said. "I see, you will not be satisfied until I tell you the whole of my little plot! Listen, then," and with his eyes fixed upon her watchingly, he told the story of the elaborate scheme which, helped by Fate, he had built up; of Lottie Belvoir's deception, and of Margaret's supposed death.
"And you did all this? You – you must be more devil than man!"
He smiled.
"I can claim to be a man who has devoted all his talents, and all his energies, to the attainment of one object. You call me names! Bah! my dear Violet, have you forgotten that evening in Park Lane, when I told you she was dead, and you thought I had murdered her? You did not call me rude names then, I think!"
She shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. When she lifted it, it was as drawn as if she had risen from a long and wasting illness.
"It is true! It is true!" she moaned, hoarsely; "and now you want me to – " She could not go on, but her lips moved.
"I want you to keep your promise, that is all, my dear Violet," he said, coolly.
"And if I refuse?"
"You will not refuse," he said, quietly. "You dare not! If you are not ready to accompany me at five o'clock I shall go to Blair, and tell him all that I have told you.
"Come, Violet; you must know that it is of little avail to oppose me, much less to argue. Face the inevitable. You used to be a brave woman once, summon up some courage now. Consider, after all, what can you do better than fly with me? In an hour or two, at any moment, as I say, Blair and the countess will meet, the truth will be known, and you – what will you be? Nothing – worse than nothing! The law cannot give you redress, for Blair believed her dead; but none the less you will be – an outcast!"
She writhed and tore at the pillows in a frenzy of despair.
"Oh, please!" he murmured, reproachfully. "Is this the same woman who bade me separate Blair and Margaret Hale at any cost? —at any cost? Come, pluck up a little spirit. What must be, must be; and it is certain that you will have to yield to me."
"He can but kill me!" she moaned, desperately.
Austin Ambrose laughed.
"Nonsense! Blair will do nothing of the kind. He will simply repudiate you, and with many apologies, show you the door. But really it would be more merciful to kill you outright, than to leave you the butt of the whole of London! The great heiress, Violet Graham, wrongfully married to Blair Leyton, and discarded for his first and lawful wife!" and he laughed.
She put up her hand to silence him; and, his mood changing, he caught the hand and fell on his knees at her side.
"Forgive me, Violet! Do you not see that I am only seeming hard and cruel? Do you think that my heart does not bleed for you? But what can I do? You force me to tell you the truth in all its nakedness; for I know that if I do not convince you that you have no other alternative, you will not yield! Do not force me to say any more; accept the inevitable. Say the word; give me your promise to be ready at the time I have named, and I will take you with me – "
"Never! never!" she said, hoarsely, and endeavoring to draw her hand from his grasp.
"What do you fear? Why do you shrink from me? Do you think that I do not love you? What stronger proof do you want than that I have given you? Have I not done more to win you than one man in a million does for the woman he wants? If it had been murder itself I would not have hesitated, I would not hesitate now! Ah, Violet! think of me a little. I, too, have suffered, suffered the tortures of the damned, for it was my hand that gave you – for a time – to him! I have stood by and seen you the wife of another, the man I hate – "
"Hate! – you hate him?" she re-echoed.
"Yes," he said, a lurid light shining in his eyes. "I always hated him because you loved him! Many and many a time I have longed to see him dead at my feet – but no more of that! What does it matter? It is only of my love for you that I wish to think or speak. Trust yourself to my love, the deepest and truest man ever felt. I will marry you when and where you please; I will spend the remainder of my life in devotion to you; I will – " he stopped breathless, and carried away by his passion, he threw his arms about her.
She struggled from his embrace, and even struck at him.
"Go with you!" she gasped. "Leave him for you?" and she laughed wildly. "I would rather die!"
"Very good. I may take that as your decision? In half an hour I take Blair to his wife; in half an hour I will tell him how he came to lose her, and that it was you – Violet Graham – who tempted and prompted me to carry out the plot which has nearly wrecked his life. And then I leave you to face him."
He took one step from her, but she sprung up and throwing herself at his feet clutched at his arm.
"No, no! Give me time! Wait, Austin! Only wait! I – I did not mean to be hard. I – I – oh, have pity on me!" and she turned her white face up to him. "Have pity on me! I was only a woman, and I – I did love him so! Yes, I know it was I who tempted you, but I did not know that you cared for me as – as you say you do, and – oh, Austin, look at me kneeling to you for more than life – ah, for life itself! Do not betray me! I will do anything – "
"Anything but the one thing I want," he said, coldly. "You would offer me money, anything. Money! If you had all the wealth of the Rothschilds and offered it to me to forego the reward I have worked for, I would say 'no!' No, if I cannot have you, for whom I have plotted and planned, I will at least have revenge. You cannot rob me of that. Let go my hand and leave me free to join the early parted husband and wife."
"No!" she wailed, clinging to him. "Stay, Austin, I will – I will consent!"
He stooped down and looked at her face.
"Say that again," he said, eagerly. "You will consent? You will go with me?"
She rose, and with both hands pushed her disordered hair from her white face. Then, looking at him steadily:
"Yes, I will go with you."
"You – you will? Oh, my darling!" and he made to take her in his arms, but she put out her hands and kept him off.
"Yes," she said in a low, dull voice, "I will go with you. I see it is useless to fight against you."
"It is, it is!" he assented, intently. "And you will come to the cathedral – "
"No," she said, like one repeating a lesson; "come to me here at five o'clock. I – I am not strong enough to go out. Come at five o'clock, and – I will be ready."
He knelt on one knee, and taking her hand, pressed it to his lips.
"Violet, you know that I can keep an oath. I have proved it, have I not? Then hear me swear that you shall never regret your resolution. I will wipe out the past, I will surround you with a love that shall cause you to forget all that has happened, and that, that – must make you happy! At five! Go now and lie down, dearest! You will need all your strength, for the journey must be a long and a swift one. A few hours and we shall be beyond the reach of pursuit! And then – ah, then, your new life will commence! A life which my love shall make one dream of happiness! Go, dearest! At five! Remember!"
He led her to the door; she drew her hand from his hot, burning fingers, and pressed it on her forehead, then as she opened the door she turned and looked at him – a steady, resolute look.
"I will remember," she said. "I will be ready when you come!"
CHAPTER XXX
Ten minutes after Lottie fell senseless beside the stone steps of the Palace Augustus, a slight, girlish figure came quickly down the street. It was dressed in black, the only spot of relief being the fur lining of the hood which almost concealed her face. Though she was quite alone, she walked with a fearless and confident bearing, like one whose safety was insured. As she came near the gateway of the palace, a man, bearing the unmistakable signs of a footpad, approached her stealthily, but after a glance at the half-shrouded face, he made a bow, and spreading out his hands toward her, with respectful and almost awed deprecation, stood aside to let her pass.
Margaret, for she it was, returned the salutation with a gentle inclination of her head, and went on her way.
As she walked along in the starlight, a strange feeling of peacefulness, that for all its serenity had something of elation in it, pervaded her. She had just come from visiting a child down with the fever, which is as characteristic of Naples as its bay, or its volcano, and the blessings which the mother of the little one had called down upon Margaret's head, seemed to have borne fruit.
To-night, as she looked up at the stars, she could bring herself to think of Blair with a feeling of forgiveness and tenderness which she had not, as yet, been capable of.
In this life he could never be her own again, never; but perhaps in that mysterious after-life toward which they were all drifting, he would, in some way, come back to her. That he had loved her, even while sinning against her, she felt convinced; and to-night, as she walked through the silent streets, his face came before her, and his voice rose in her memory with a strange distinctness. In fancy she was back again at Leyton Court and at Appleford, and a reflection of these times, in all their glorious coloring of happiness, fell upon her spirit in the dark street, and illuminated it with a curious sadness that had a tinge of joy in it.
"Oh, Blair, my love, my love!" she murmured, looking up at the stars, very much as he had done about an hour before, "we shall never meet again here on earth, but who knows what may await us up there?"
As she lowered her eyes with a gentle sigh, she saw the figure of Lottie huddled up in a scarcely distinguishable mass beside the doorway of the Augustus Palace; she stopped immediately, and kneeling beside the unconscious girl, spoke to her gently. At first she thought that the girl was dead, but she detected a faint movement of the heart, and raising her head upon her knee, she moistened her lips with some eau-de-Cologne.
The light was so dim that she did not recognize her, and she was loosening the worn shawl and chafing the thin hands that hung limply at her side, when a man and woman came down the street.
Margaret beckoned to them. After a glance, they were keeping on their way; but she called to them, and hearing her voice their manner changed, and they hurried forward.
"A poor girl who has fallen in a swoon," explained Margaret.
"Looks like dead, signorina," said the man, shrugging his shoulders Italian fashion. "Best fetch the police: dead people give trouble to the most innocent."
"Oh, no, no; she is not dead, indeed!" said Margaret, earnestly.
"That's not what you said when the signorina nursed you through the ague, ungrateful pig!" exclaimed the man's wife, with charming candor. "What shall we do, lady?"
"If I could get her somewhere out of the street," said Margaret, anxiously. "I think she has fainted from hunger."
"Like enough," said the man. "It's a most popular complaint, lady!"
"I'll take her to our rooms, signorina," said the woman promptly. "Lift her, Tonelli!"
The husband obeyed with half sullen resignation, and the pair carried Lottie to a house in one of the small streets. They laid her on the bed; and Margaret, after dispatching the man to her house for wine and food, and setting the woman to light a fire, threw her fur cloak over the girl, and then, and not till then, carried a light close to her.
As she did so the lamp nearly fell to the ground, for she recognized in the girl she had rescued, the woman who had dealt her the blow that had wrecked her life. There, lying motionless and senseless, was Blair's real wife!
She set the lamp down and staggered back to a chair.
"The signorina is tired and ill!" exclaimed the woman of the house, gazing at her sympathetically. "Will not the signorina leave the girl to my care, and go home to rest? You wear yourself out for the poor, lady!"
"No, no!" said Margaret, fighting against the weakness which threatened to master her. "It – it is only a little faintness. Is the fire all right? Yes? Then will you go down and warm some of the wine Tonelli will bring, and bring it up to me?"
The woman left the room, and Margaret once more bent over the unconscious Lottie.
Yes, it was the same woman! But how came she to be lying in the streets of Naples, in rags, and evidently half-famished? Had Blair deserted her again?
All the while she was pondering she was using means to bring warmth and life back, and presently the woman of the house came up with the hot wine.
Margaret succeeded in getting some through the white lips, and after awhile Lottie opened her eyes. They rested upon the lovely face for some seconds vacantly, but presently a gleam of intelligence shot across them, and she tried to raise herself upon her elbow, staring wildly at what she took to be a vision.
"Do not move," said Margaret, softly. "You are weak and ill. Drink some of this wine."
Lottie took the cup and drained it feverishly.
"Give me some more," she gasped. "Give me anything to wake me from this dream. Do you hear? Wake me, or I shall go mad! I tell you I can see her standing there in front of me!" and she pointed to Margaret wildly. "I've often fancied I've seen her, but never so plainly as now. Wake me! for Heaven's sake, wake me!"
"Try and keep quiet," said Margaret, soothingly; but at the sound of her voice Lottie only grew more excited.
"There! I can hear her speaking! What is it she says? I know I did it! I plead guilty, my lord! But it was not me only. Where is he? Where is Austin Ambrose? He is worse than I am, my lord. Send me to prison, if you like, but don't let him go scot-free. He is worse than I am! It was he who put me up to it – and now he leaves me to starve! Yes, he did! He threatened me, told me that he'd have me charged, and that he'd swear he knew nothing about it. Where is Austin Ambrose? He is worse than I am, my lord!"
Then she sank down, as if exhausted; but presently she started up with a cry of terror and clutched at Margaret's arm.
"Blair! Blair!" she shrieked, and at the name poor Margaret winced and could scarcely suppress a cry. "Blair will be killed! I heard them say so! Quick! Find him – stop the fight! The prince will kill him! Blair is no match for him – I heard them say so. Oh, for the love of Heaven, don't stand there doing nothing, but find them and stop them!"
The woman of the house crept to the bed, and looking down curiously shrugged her shoulders.
"She is English, lady, is she not? She is in the fever and raves; is it not so? What is it she says?"
"I – I am afraid she is delirious," said Margaret, scarcely knowing what she answered. "Will you go for the English doctor and beg him to come to me at once?"
Lottie caught the word doctor, and raising herself on her elbow, held out her hand imploringly.
"Oh, never mind me!" she panted. "What does it matter about me? It's Blair – Blair you must save! Don't you believe me? I tell you I heard them talking about it before I fell – where was it?" and she put her hand to her head and sank back with a groan.
Margaret sat beside the bed, with one of the girl's wasted, burning hands held tightly in her own.
She could not think – the meeting was too strange and mysterious to permit of her doing that – but she sat in a kind of dull stupor, even after the doctor had come and gone again.
The night passed away, and morning dawned, and with the first streak in the east Lottie awoke.
That she was no longer delirious was evident by her eyes, but she turned pale and started, as they fell upon Margaret.
"It was no dream, then!" she said, in a low voice, covering her face with her hands. "It was really you who sat beside me?"
"Yes, it was I," said Margaret, sadly and shyly, for it Came flashing upon her that this woman, after all, was Blair's wife. "I am glad you are better. I will go now," and she rose, a little stiffly.
Lottie put out her hand.
"No – stay," she said, with a frightened, nervous glance. "I – I have something to tell you! Oh, if I only knew how! Don't be angry with me more than you can help. Punish me if you like, but don't say much to me. I've done the cruellest thing that ever one woman did to another, and I deserve to be shot – " At the word she started up, and flung out her arms. "What is the time? is it morning? Not morning! Do not tell me that! Oh, great Heaven, how long have I been lying here? Oh, too late, too late!" and she rocked herself to and fro.
"Why are you too late, and for what?"
"To save him! To save Blair! Didn't I tell you? It seems to me that I have been raving about it for hours! He and the Prince Rivani are to fight this morning. This morning! It is light now!"
"Blair – Lord Leyton; your – your husband!" said Margaret, holding on to the bed to support herself.
"My husband!" Lottie almost shrieked; then she laughed wildly and hysterically. "No! not my husband, but yours!"
"Mine!" said Margaret, her eyes fixed on the flushed face and desperate black eyes.
"Yes; yours, yours, yours!" cried Lottie. "Oh, can't you understand? No! You are so good and true, that you cannot believe there are such fiends in the world as me and Austin Ambrose!"
"Austin Ambrose!" was all Margaret could falter.
"Austin Ambrose! The cruellest, cleverest scoundrel on earth!" cried Lottie, tearing at her clothes and flinging them on as she spoke. "It was he who tempted me to go down to that place in Devonshire, and pass myself off as Blair's wife – "
"Pass yourself off as – Then – then you are not his wife?"
"No, and never was!" cried Lottie.
"Then – Oh, stop! – give me a minute! No! – don't touch me! I'm not going to faint!" for Lottie had sprung forward to catch her. "I will not faint; only give me a minute. I am Blair's wife! – Blair's wife! Say it again!" and the poor soul, white and red by turns, held up her hands to the wickedly weak and erring Lottie.
"I'll say it a thousand times; I'll beg your forgiveness on my knees; I'll do anything to atone for what I've done – but not now!" she exclaimed fiercely. "For while we are talking here, murder's being done; for it is murder to pit a man against Prince Rivani, and that's what they have done with Blair – Lord Ferrers, I mean!"
"Ah!" Margaret caught her breath, and pressed her hand to her heart for a moment; then she snatched up her cloak and flung it round her, and sprung to the door.
Lottie had just succeeded in getting on her ragged clothing, and put out a hand, humbly and imploringly, to stop her.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
Margaret put her hand away with simple dignity, and, looking at her, replied:
"To save my husband!"
Mr. Austin Ambrose left the boudoir a happier man than he had ever been before during the whole course of his life.
There is a keener joy in the anticipation of success and victory which the actual success and victory themselves cannot produce. In his mind's eye he saw himself – as he had pictured to Violet – lying at her feet in some sunny, vine-clad villa in Spain. Those two by themselves, with no one to share or dispute his claim to her! With Blair either dead of Prince Rivani's rapier thrust, or away in England with Margaret! Yes, success had come to him at last. Not only would he have won the woman he loved with a passion which he had nourished and fostered and secretly fed during all those long and bitter months, but he would have secured wealth as well, for he had not managed Blair's estate for Blair's benefit alone, but had contrived to feather his own nest pretty considerably; besides, Violet still held her own money, and it would now become his!
He was so filled with the ecstasy of anticipation that he could have stopped on the great staircase, and raised the house with his exultant laughter, had there not been still something to do before he could admit that all was ready.
Always looking forward to this supreme moment, he had arranged with one of the drivers of the pair-horse carriages to expect a summons from him, and, slipping on a cloak, he went out to the corner of the street and gave the man his instructions. He was to wait at the corner of the cathedral until he, Austin Ambrose, arrived with a lady. The man was then to drive to the station as if for his life, and regardless of anything. Then he returned to the palace, and hastily packed a small portmanteau. He had scarcely finished it when Blair's valet knocked at the door, with General Trelani's card.