Renshaw Fanning's Quest Part 31

And the man--he who owed his life to the other many times over, but never so much as in the last instance--what of him?

Nothing! For from such a nature as his nothing was to be expected.

This modern Judas, unlike his prototype, was prepared to enjoy to the full the price of blood. No compunction on that head troubled him.

"Oh, Maurice. I must warn you!" cried Violet, suddenly. "Everything has come out."

He started then. A grey scared look came over his face. His conscience and his mind flew back to those grim, iron-bound deserts.

"Everything?" he stammered, blankly.

"Yes, dear. About ourselves, I mean. I can't imagine how, but it has.

They have been leading me such a life. Hilda has been perfectly hateful. The way in which she has treated me is absolutely scandalous.

And Marian--sanctimonious sheep! Pah! I hate them all," she broke off, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"My poor darling. But how do you suppose it happened? You haven't been leaving any letters about?"

"No--no--no," she interrupted quickly. "No, no. My belief is-- she--_she_--has found out where I--I am--where you are--and has written to them."

His face grew dark.

"That devil!" he muttered between his teeth. "That she-devil would do anything--anything."

"I want to warn you, Maurice. The only way out of the difficulty, while we are here, is for us to pretend to care nothing about each other--that the past was only a matter of a pa.s.sing flirtation, and not to be taken seriously. Do you follow my plan?"

"Yes; but I don't like it."

"That can't be helped. Do you suppose I like it? But it will not be for long. I am going away very soon--it might be any day now--home again. Then we can make up for the present hateful restraint. What is to prevent you returning by the same steamer? You will, Maurice, darling--you will--will you not?" she urged, clinging closer to him, and looking up into his eyes with a piteously hungering expression, as though fearing to read there the faintest forestalment of a negative.

But her fears were groundless.

"Will I? I should rather think I would. Listen, Violet. This mad expedition of poor Fanning's has turned up trumps. I have that about me at this moment which should be worth two or three hundred thousand pounds at least. Only think of it. We have the world at our feet--a new life before us. You are, as you say, going home. But it will be to a real home!"

She looked into his eyes--her gaze seemed to burn into his--her breast was heaving convulsively.

They understood each other.

"Do you mean it, Maurice?" she gasped. "My darling, do you really and truly mean it?"

"Mean it? Of course I do. It was with no other object I went risking my life a dozen times a day in that ghastly desert. With the wealth that is ours we can afford to defy all the world--that she-devil included. And we will."

"Yes, we will."

Their lips met once more, and thus the compact was sealed. Alas--poor Violet! She had given herself over, bound, into the enemy's hand. She had sold herself, and the price paid was the price of blood--even the blood of him who had sacrificed his own life for her sake.

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

SELLON'S LAST LIE.

But that he held the key to it in the shape of Violet's communication, the reserve, not to say coldness, of his reception by the family, would have astonished Sellon not a little. Now, however, it in no wise disconcerted him; rather, it struck him in the light of a joke. He had got his cue, and meant to act up to it.

So when his somewhat involuntary host asked if he would mind giving him a private interview, he replied with the jolliest laugh in the world--

"Certainly, certainly, my dear fellow. Delighted, Well, Miss Effie"--as that young person ran against them in the hall--"here I am, back again to tease you, you see."

"Where's Uncle Renshaw, Mr Sellon?" said the child.

Maurice stared. The straight question--the straight look accompanying it, disconcerted him for a moment.

"Renshaw! Oh, coming on," he answered quickly, "coming on. Be here soon, I dare say."

He had made the same sort of reply to the same inquiry on the part of his host. He thought he had done with the subject. It irritated him to be called upon to repeat the same lie over and over again.

"By the way, Mr Sellon," began the latter, "did you get the letter I sent you at Maraisdorp?"

"Mister Sellon!" Maurice started. Old Chris, was taking the thing seriously indeed, he thought with an inward laugh.

"Not I," he answered. "Probably for the best of all possible reasons.

I didn't come through Maraisdorp, or anywhere near it."

"Before going any further, I want you to look at this," said Selwood, unlocking a small safe and taking out the unfortunate missive. "Wait-- excuse me one moment, I want you to look attentively at the direction first."

He still held the envelope. Maurice took one glance at the address--the handwriting--and as he did so his face was not pleasant to behold.

"All right. I know that calligraphy well enough. Ought to by this time. Ha, ha! So she has been favouring you with her peculiar views on things in general and me in particular. You ought to feel honoured."

"I? Favouring me?" echoed the other, in a state of amazement.

"Yes--you. I suppose the communication is an interesting one."

"My dear Sellon, look at the address again," said Christopher, handing him the envelope.

"By Jove! It's for me, after all," looking at it again. "What a treat!

Why the devil can't the woman write legibly!" he muttered. Then aloud: "Why, it looks exactly as if it was addressed to you, Selwood."

"Ha! I am very glad indeed to hear you say that. I thought the same.

You see, I'd got it mixed up among a crowd of other letters, and opened it by mistake."

"The devil you did!"

"Yes. I can only tell you how sorry I am, and how I have spent life cursing my blundering asinine stupidity ever since. But there is another thing. I feel bound in honour to tell you that I didn't become aware of the mistake until I had run my eye down the first page. You will notice there is no beginning. I turned to the signature for enlightenment; but between the first page and the signature I did not read a word."

Sellon burst into a roar of laughter--apparently over the mistake, in reality as he realised how quickly he would be in a position to turn the enemy's flank.

"My dear fellow, don't say another word about it. The joke is an exceedingly rich one. See what comes of our names being so infernally alike. Two Sells--eh? But you don't suppose I am going to share in your entertainment over this charming epistle? Not much. Just oblige me with a match."

"Wait, wait," cried the other. "Better read it this time--or, at any rate, as much of it as it was my misfortune to see."

"H'm! Well, here goes," said Maurice, jerking the letter out of the envelope as though it would burn his fingers, "Quite so," he went on, with a bitter sneer, running his eye down the sheet. "That's about enough of this highly entertaining doc.u.ment, the rest can be taken as read, like a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons. That match, if you please. Thanks. I need hardly remind you, Selwood," he went on, watching the flaming sheet curling up in the grate, "I need hardly remind you how many men there are in this world who marry the wrong woman. I dare say I needn't remind you either that a considerable percentage of these are entrapped and defrauded into the concern by lies and deception, against which it is next to impossible for any man to guard--at all events any young man. When to this I add that there are women in this world who for sheer, gratuitous, uniform fiendishness of disposition could give the devil points and beat him at an easy canter.