Chapter Eighteen. Sinned Against.

Liane’s first inclination was not to comply with the request, for knowing the crafty nature of this woman, she feared that the words had been written merely to place her off her guard. Yet immediately after luncheon at the Villa Chevrier on the following day she declared her intention of going down to the English library to get some books, and leaving her father and the Prince smoking over their liqueurs, went out upon the Promenade. As soon, however, as she was out of sight of the windows of the villa, she hailed a passing cab and drove to the Grand Hotel, where she found George sitting in a wicker-chair in the doorway, consoling himself by smoking a cigarette and awaiting her.

“You have come at last,” he cried, approaching the carriage. “Don’t get out. We will drive straight to the station,” and stepping in, he gave the man directions.

“What does this mean?” inquired Liane, eagerly.

“I cannot tell its meaning, dearest,” he answered. “I merely received a note, saying that you would call for me on your way to Monaco.”

“Have you no idea why she desires to see both of us?”

“None whatever,” he replied.

“You have found her,” she observed in a deep, earnest tone. “In my letter she says that you are her friend. You don’t know her true character, I suppose,” his well-beloved added, looking earnestly into his eyes. “If you did you would not visit her.”

“She lives in an air of the most severe respectability,” he said. “I dined at the Villa Fortunée the night before last, and found her an extremely pleasant hostess.”

She smiled. Then, while driving along the Avenue de la Gare to the station she told him of Mariette’s past in similar words to those used by Madame Bertholet. He sat listening eagerly, but a dark shadow crossed his features when, in conclusion, she added, “Such, unfortunately, is the woman who is to be bribed to marry you.”

They alighted, obtained their tickets, crossed the platform, and entered the rapide. It was crowded with people going to Monte Carlo, and the tunnels rendered the journey hot, dusty and unpleasant. Nevertheless the distance was not far, and when half-an-hour later they were ascending the steep winding way which led up to the rock of Monaco, Liane’s heart sank within her, for she feared that she was acting unwisely.

“It is very remarkable that Mariette should have written to us both in this manner,” George was saying as he strolled on beside the pale-faced graceful girl. “Evidently she desires to consult us upon some matter of urgency. Perhaps it concerns us both. Who knows?”

“It may,” she answered mechanically. “She is not, however, a person to trust. Women of her character have, alas! neither feeling nor honour.”

“Is she, then, so notoriously bad?” he asked in surprise.

“You know who and what I am,” she answered, turning to him, her grave grey eyes fixed upon his. “I have been forced against my inclination to frequent the gambling-rooms through months, nay years, and I knew Mariette Lepage long ago as the most vicious of all the women who hovered about the tables in search of dupes.”

By her manner he saw that she was annoyed, and jealous that he should have visited and dined with this woman so strangely referred to in his father’s will, and he hastened to re-assure her that there was but one woman in the world for him.

“Then you will not marry her?” she cried eagerly. “Do not, for my sake. If you knew all you would rather cast the money into yonder sea than become her husband.”

“Well,” he said, “it is imperative that she should be offered the bribe to become my wife. If she refuses I shall gain fifty thousand pounds. I have thought of buying her refusal by offering to divide equally with her the sum I shall obtain.”

“Excellent!” she cried, enthusiastically. “I never thought of that. If she will do so the cruel punishment your father intended will be turned to pleasure, and you will be twenty-five thousand pounds the richer.”

“I will approach her,” he said, after brief hesitation. “You know, darling, that I love you far too well to contemplate marriage with any other woman.”

“But remember, I can never become your wife,” she observed huskily, her eyes behind her veil filled to overflowing with tears. “I am debarred from that.”

“Ah! no,” he cried, “don’t say that. Let us hope on.”

“All hope within me is dead,” she answered gloomily. “I care nothing now for the future. In a few brief days we are leaving here, and I shall say farewell, George, never again to meet you.”

“You always speak so strangely and so dismally,” he said. “You will never tell me anything of the reason you are so irrevocably bound to Zertho. In the old days at Stratfield you always took me into your confidence.”

“Yes, yes,” she answered, quickly. “I would tell you everything if I could—but I dare not. You would hate me.”

“Hate you. Why?”

“You could no longer grasp my hand or kiss my lips,” she faltered. “No, you must not, you shall not know, for I could not bear that you of all men should spurn me, leave me, and remember me only with loathing. I could not bear it. I would rather kill myself.”

She was trembling, her breast rose and fell with the exertion of the steep ascent, and her face was blanched and haggard. Her attitude, whenever he referred to Zertho, always mystified and puzzled him. Had she not spoken vaguely of some strange crime?

Yet he loved her with all the strength of his being, and the sight of her terrible anxiety and dread pained him beyond measure. He was ready and willing to do anything to assist and liberate her from the mysterious thraldom, nevertheless she preserved a silence dogged and complete. He strove to discern a way out of the complicated situation, but could discover none.

“Have you ever been to the Villa Fortunée before?” he asked presently, after a long and painful silence, when they had crossed the sunny square before the Prince’s palace, and were strolling along the road which skirted the rock with the small blue bay to their left and the white houses of Monte Carlo gleaming beyond.

“No,” she answered. “I had no idea Mariette, ‘The Golden Hand,’ lived here. She used always to live at the little bijou villa in the Rue Cotta at Nice.”

“The Golden Hand!” he exclaimed, laughing. “Why do you call her that?”

“It is the name she has earned at the tables because of her extraordinary good fortune,” Liane answered. “Her winnings at trente-et-quarante are said to have been greater perhaps than any other player during the past few years.”

At that moment the road turned sharply, almost at right angles, and Liane found herself before the great white house where lived the notorious gambler, the woman whose powdered, painted face every habitué of Monte Carlo knew so well, and whose luck was the envy of them all.

She read the name of the villa upon the marble tablet, and for a moment hesitated and held back, fearing to meet face to face the woman she held in fear. But George had already entered the gateway and ascended the steps, and she felt impelled to follow, a few moments later taking a seat in the cool handsome salon where the flowers diffused a sweet subtle perfume, and the light was softly tempered by the closed sun-shutters.

Liane and her lover sat facing each other, the silence being complete save for the swish of the sea as it broke ever and anon upon the brown rocks deep below. A moment later, however, there was a sound of the opening and shutting of doors, and with a frou-frou of silk there entered “The Golden Hand.”

She wore an elegant dress of pale mauve trimmed with velvet, and as she came forward into the room a smile of welcome played upon her lips, but George thought she looked older and more haggard than when he had visited her only two days before.

Closing the door quietly behind her, she crossed almost noiselessly to where they were seated, and sinking upon a settee expressed pleasure at receiving their visit.

“I was not exactly certain whether you would come, you know,” she exclaimed, with a coquettish laugh. “I was afraid Liane would refuse.”

“You told me that you were her friend,” he said.

“And that was the entire truth,” she answered.

Liane faced her, her countenance pale, her lips parted. She had held back in fear when this woman had entered, but the calm expression and pleasant smile had now entirely disarmed her suspicions. Yet she feared lest this woman whom she had known in the old days, should divulge the secret she had kept from her lover. George, the man she adored, was, she knew, fast slipping away from her. On the one hand she was forced to marry Zertho, while on the other this very woman, whom she feared, was to be bribed to accept her lover as husband. Liane looked into her face and tried to read her thoughts. But her countenance had grown cold and mysterious.

“You were not always my friend,” she said at last, in a low, strained tone.

“No, not always,” the woman admitted, in English. “I have seldom been generous towards my own sex. I was, it is true, Liane, until recently, your enemy,” she added, in a sympathetic tone. “I should be now if it were not for recent events.”

“You intend, then, to prove my friend,” Liane gasped excitedly, half-rising from her chair. “You—you will say nothing.”

“On the contrary, I shall speak the truth.”

“Ah, no,” she wailed. “No, spare me that. Think! Think! surely my lot is hard enough to bear! Already I have lost George, the man I love.”

“Your loss is my gain,” Mariette Lepage said slowly. “You have lost a lover, while I have found a husband.”

“And you will marry him—you?” she cried, dismayed.

“I know what are your thoughts,” the other said. “My reputation is unenviable—eh?”

Liane did not answer; her lover sat rigid and silent.

“Well,” went on the woman known at the tables as “The Golden Hand,” “I cannot deny it. All that you see here, my house, my furniture, my pictures, the very clothes I wear, I have won fairly at the tables, because—well, because I am, I suppose, one of the fortunate ones. Others sit and ruin themselves by unwise play, while I sit beside them and prosper. Because of that, I am pointed out by men and women as a kind of extraordinary species, and shunned by all save the professional players to whom you and I belong. But,” she added, gazing meaningly at Liane, “you know my past as well as I know yours.”

The words caused her to turn pale as death, while her breath came and went quickly. She was in momentary dread lest a single word of the terrible truth she was striving to hide should involuntarily escape her.

“Yes,” Liane said, “I knew you well when I went daily to the Casino, and have often envied you, for while my father lost and lost you invariably won and crammed handsful of notes into your capacious purse. At first I envied you, but soon I grew to hate you.”

“You hated me, because even into my hardened heart love had found its way,” she said reproachfully.

“I hated you because I knew that you loved only gold. I had seen sufficient of you to know that you had no higher thought than of the chances of the red or the black. You had been aptly nicknamed ‘The Golden Hand.’”

“And I, too, envied you,” the other said. “I envied you your grace and your beauty; yet often I felt sorry for you. You seemed so jaded and world-weary, although so young, that it was a matter of surprise that they gave you your carte at the Bureau.”

“Now, strangely enough, we are rivals,” Liane observed.

“Only because you are beneath the thrall of one who holds you in his power,” Mariette answered. “You love each other so fervently that I could never be your rival, even if you were free.”

“But, alas! I am not free,” she said, in deep despondency, her eyes downcast, her head resting upon her hand.

“True,” said the other, shrugging her shoulders. “Circumstances have combined to weave about you a web in which you have become enmeshed. You are held by bonds which, alone and unassisted, you cannot break asunder.”

Liane, overcome with emotion she could no longer restrain, covered her face with her hands and burst into a torrent of tears. In an instant her lover was beside her, stroking her hair fondly, uttering words of sympathy and tenderness, and endeavouring to console her.

Mariette Lepage sat erect, motionless, silent, watching them.

“Ah!” she said slowly at length, “I know how fondly you love each other. I have myself experienced the same grief, the same bitterness as that which is rending your hearts at this moment, even though I am believed to be devoid of every passion, of every sentiment, and of every womanly feeling.”

“Let me go!” Liane exclaimed, in a voice broken by sobs, rising unsteadily from her chair. “I—I cannot bear it.”

“No, remain,” the woman said in a firm tone, a trifle harsher than before. “I asked you here to-day because I wished to speak to you. I invited the man you love, because it is but just that he should hear what I have to say.”

“Ah!” she sobbed bitterly. “You will expose me—you who have only just declared that you are my friend!”

“Be patient,” the other answered. “I know your fear. You dread that I shall tell a truth which you dare not face.”

She hung her head, sinking back rigidly into her chair with lips compressed. George stood watching her, like a man in a dream. He saw her crushed and hopeless beneath the terrible load upon her conscience, held speechless by some all-consuming terror, trembling like an aspen because she knew this woman intended to divulge her secret.

With all his soul he loved her, yet in those painful moments the gulf seemed to widen between them. Her white haggard face told him of the torture that racked her mind.

“Speak, Liane,” he cried in a low intense tone. “What is it you fear? Surely the truth may be uttered?”

“No, no!” she cried wildly, struggling to her feet. “No, let me leave before she tells you. I knew instinctively that, after all, she was not my friend.”

“Hear me before you judge,” Mariette exclaimed firmly.

“Cannot you place faith in one who declares herself ready to assist you?” he added.

She shook her head, holding her breath the while, and glaring at him with eyes full of abject fear.

“Why?”

“Ah! don’t ask me, George,” she murmured, with her chin sunk upon the lace on her breast. “I am the most wretched woman on earth, because I have wilfully deceived you. I had no right to love you; no right to let you believe that I was pure and good; no right to allow you to place faith in me. You will hate me when you know all.”

“For what reason?” he cried, dismayed.

“My life is overshadowed by evil,” she answered vaguely, in a despairing voice. “I have sinned before God, and must bear the punishment.”

“There is forgiveness for those who repent,” the woman observed slowly, a hard, cold expression upon her face, as she watched the desperate girl trembling before her.

“There is none for me,” she cried in utter despondency, haunted by fear, and bursting again into tears. “None! I can hope for no forgiveness.”

At that instant the door of the room was opened, and two persons entered unannounced. George and Liane were standing together in the centre of the saloon, while Mariette was still seated with her back to the door, so that the new comers did not at first notice her presence.

The men were Brooker and Zertho.

“We have followed you here with your lover,” exclaimed the Prince angrily, addressing Liane. “We saw you driving to the station together, and watched you. We—”

“The Golden Hand” hearing the voice, turned, and springing to her feet faced them.

“Mariette!” Zertho gasped, blanched and aghast, the words dying from his pale lips. In their eagerness to follow Liane and George they had entered the villa, not knowing that therein dwelt the woman from whom they intended on the morrow to fly.