CHAPTER XIX.

"BLOOD CALLS ALOUD FOR BLOOD AND NOT FOR HANDS ENTWINED"

It was with a strange conflict of feelings that Paul, with Adrea by his side, passed across the square, low hall of the cottage, plentifully decorated with stags' heads and other sporting trophies, and into the drawing-room. It was a room which had been built, too, of quaint shape, made up of nooks and corners and recesses, and with dark oak beams stretching right across the ceiling. The furniture was all old-fashioned, and of different periods; but the general effect was harmonious, though a trifle shabby. Paul knew it well! Many an evening he had come in to tea there, after a cigar and a chat with the old Major, and lounged in that low chair by Mrs. Harcourt's side. But it scarcely seemed like the same room to him now. The Major and his wife had been old-fashioned people, and their personality, and talk, and surroundings, had created a sort of atmosphere which Paul had grown almost to associate with the place. He missed it directly he entered the room. What it was that had worked the change it was hard to tell. Adrea had been far too charmed with its quaintness to seriously alter anything. A little stiffness in the arrangement of the furniture had been corrected, and the few antimacassars carefully removed; otherwise nothing had been changed. The great bowls of yellow roses and chrysanthemums, and the piles of modern books and music lying about, might have been partly responsible for it; and the faint perfume which he had grown to associate altogether with Adrea, and which seemed wafted into the air as she gathered up her skirts on her way into the room, had a foreign flavour in it. But, after all, it was Adrea herself who changed the atmosphere so completely. She was so different from other women in her strange Eastern beauty and the leopard-like grace of her movements that she could not fail to create an atmosphere around her. Yes! it was she herself who had worked the change; just as she had worked so wonderful a change in him, Paul told himself.

At first they had thought that the room was empty; and Adrea, who had entered a little in advance, turned round to Paul and held out her hands with a sudden sweeping gesture of invitation. Even in that moment, as he moved towards her, Paul had time to feel a quick glow of admiration at the artistic elegance of her pose and colouring. Her proud, dusky face and brilliant eyes found a perfect background in the deep orange of her loose gown, and the velvet twined amongst her dark hair. Her arms, stretched out towards him, were half bare, where the lace had fallen back, and a world of passionate love and invitation was glowing in her face as she leaned slightly towards him, as if impatient of his slow advance. But before his hands had touched hers, a voice from the further end of the room had broken in upon that eloquent silence.

"Adrea! you did not see me!"

They stood for a moment as though paralysed; then Adrea turned slowly round with darkening face. "I did not! I thought that you were upstairs!"

She glided out of the shadows, a slim, tall figure dressed with curious simplicity, and with white, bloodless face. "I am going away," she said, coming quite close to them, and fixing her full, deep eyes upon Adrea; "I am going away at once. But, Adrea, there is one word—just one word—"

"Say it!" Adrea interrupted impatiently.

She glanced at Paul. He made a movement as though to quit the room, but Adrea prevented him. "You need not go!" she said. "Anything that is to be said can be said to you as well as to me. I prefer to have no secrets! You were going to say something to me," she added, turning to her companion.

"Yes! I have no objection to say it before Mr. de Vaux. I simply want to ask you whether you consider him a proper visitor in this house?"

"I choose it! I am mistress here!"

For a moment an angry reply seemed to quiver upon the woman's lips, but it died away.

"You are right! I thank you for reminding me of it," she said quietly. "And yet, Adrea, hear me! You are doing an evil thing! Was your father's murder so light a thing to you that you can join hands with his murderer's son? Remember that day! Think of your father lying across that chamber floor, stricken dead in a single moment by Martin de Vaux—by his father! It is not seemly that you two should stand there, hand in hand! It is not seemly for you to be under the same roof! It is horrible!"

There was a moment's silence. Then Adrea threw open the door, and pointed to it.

"Go!" she ordered coldly. "You have had your say, and that is my answer! You were my father's friend; I believe that he loved you! It was for his sake that I offered you shelter! It was for his sake that I brought you here! But, remember this: if you wish to stay with me, let me never hear another word from you on this subject!"

She went out silently. Adrea closed the door, and turned round with all the hardness fading swiftly out of her features. A moment before there had been a look of the tigress in her eyes; and Paul, watching her, had shuddered. It was gone now. She came close up to Paul, and led him to a chair.

"Was I very undignified?" she said, laughing. "I am afraid I was. I was very angry!"

He shook his head. "You were not undignified," he said, "but you were very severe. I think that she will go away."

Adrea's face hardened again. "I do not care! I would hate the dearest friend I had on earth who tried to come between us. Oh! Paul, Paul! don't you feel as I do; as though the world were empty, and my mind swept bare of memories,—as though there were no background to it all, nothing save you and I, and our love?"

Paul drew her to him. For him, at that moment, there was no past nor any future. The dreamy abandon of her manner seemed to have raised an echo within him.

"Listen! What is that?" Adrea exclaimed suddenly.

There was the ring of a horse's hoofs in the avenue, and immediately afterwards a loud peal at the bell. Paul and Adrea looked at one another breathlessly. Who could it be?

The outer door was opened and closed, and then quick steps passed across the hall. The drawing-room door was thrown open, and Arthur de Vaux, pale and splashed with mud from head to foot, stood upon the threshold.