Linnet took less than one minute to make up her mind. Not twice in his life should Andreas treat her so before her own servants. She was too proud to cry; but as soon as her husband had left the room she picked herself up from the floor where he had brutally flung her, wiped the blood from her arm, smoothed her hair with her hand, and motioned silently to Ellen to follow her into her bedroom. She motioned to her, because she couldn’t trust herself to speak without crying, and never now should she allow that hateful man to wring a single tear from her. In those few brief moments, she had decided once for all what she meant to do. After all that had passed just now, she must leave him instantly. The crisis had come; Andreas Hausberger should suffer for it.
Hastily, with Ellen’s aid, she packed a few things into her little portmanteau. She put in just what she would most need for some evenings’ stay; she put in also her diamonds and the rest of her jewellery, not omitting the coral necklet Will Deverill gave her long ago in the Tyrol. Luckily, she had in her desk the week’s money for the housekeeping. She took it out?—?it was her own?—?and turned more calmly to Ellen. “My child,” she said, laying two sovereigns in her hand, “will you come with me where I go? Remember, Mr Hausberger says you’re his servant.”
And the girl, looking up at her with a burst of compassion and enthusiastic affection, made answer at once: “I’d go with you, Signora, if they was to cut off my head for it. How dare he ever treat you so?—?such a man as him?—?and you a lady anyone ’ud love to die for!”
“Thank you, dear,” Linnet said, much touched; for to her, even her servants were perfectly human. “Then run up and put your things on as fast as you can, and ask Maria to call a hansom.”
When it came to the door, she stepped in, and Ellen after her. “Where shall I drive, Mum?” the cabman asked. And Linnet, through the flap, made answer boldly, “To Duke Street, St James’s.”
“That’s where Mr Deverill lives, ma’am, isn’t it?” Ellen interposed, somewhat tremulously.
“Yes, child,” Linnet answered, with a choking voice, but very firmly still, for she had quite made her mind up. “Mr Deverill lives there?—?and I’m going to Mr Deverill’s. I’ve no right to go?—?but I’m going, all the same. If you’d rather not come, you can leave me at the door. You know what it means. Perhaps it would be better.”
The girl glanced back at her, all flushed. “I don’t care a pin whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong,” she answered warmly. “I’ll go with you to the world’s end. I’ll go with you anywhere. I’d go with you if you was going to the worst house in London.”
Linnet answered nothing. She was red with shame?—?the very words appalled her?—?but she meant to go through with it. Too long had she trampled her own heart under foot; now her heart would have its way, and she meant to allow it. Her fiery Southern blood had got the better of her. She would fly from the man who had married her only for what he could make of her, to the man she had always truly loved?—?the man who had always truly loved her.
“Is Mr Deverill in?” she asked with a beating heart of the servant at the lodgings. And when the man answered, “Yes, ma’am,” in an unconcerned tone, her heart rose like a lump in her throat within her.
But she kept her exterior coolness. “Bring in the portmanteau, Ellen,” she said, with a quiet air of command; and the girl obeyed her. “Now, sit there in the hall till I come down again and call you.”
She trod the stairs like a queen. Will Deverill was seated at his desk at work, when the servant flung open the door with a flourish, and announced, in his most grandiose tone, “Signora Casalmonte!”
Will looked up in surprise, and saw Linnet before him.
Her face, which had been flushed five minutes earlier, was now pale and bloodless with intense excitement. Marks of fingers stood out on her neck and wrists; a slight bruise scarred the surface of her smooth left temple. But she was beautiful still, in spite of all such accidents?—?very beautiful and winning. She stood a second and gazed at him. At sight of her one true love, her bosom rose and fell; that strange wave of delight she had felt at Innsbruck, and again at the Harmony, thrilled once more through and through her. Of a sudden, as she paused, her face flushed rosy red again, her eyes grew bright, her full throat heaved and panted. She spread out her arms towards him with a hasty little quiver. “O Will, Will, Will,” she cried, in a voice of complete and intense self-surrender; “at last?—?I have come to you!”
Will rose in surprise and moved across to her, trembling. He seized her two hands in his and gazed at her longingly. “Linnet, dear Linnet,” he cried, drawing a very deep breath; “what has brought you here to-day? What on earth do you mean by it?”
But Linnet had flung away all artificial restraints and conventions now. She abandoned herself to her love with the perfect abandonment of a pure and good woman, when once she has made up her mind to repress nature no longer. With a wild impulse of delight, she flung herself bodily into her lover’s arms. She flung herself into Will’s arms, and buried her head confidingly on his tender shoulder. Then she broke into a storm of deep-drawn sobs. “It means,” she cried, between little bursts, “I’ve left him for ever. That man I never loved, I’ve left him for ever. And I’ve come home at last where I ought to have come to nestle long ago. Will, Will, dear Will?—?will you take me? May I stop with you?”
In a transport of joy, Will clasped her to his bosom. Not to have done so, indeed, would have been more?—?or less?—?than human. No man can even pretend to be otherwise than overjoyed when the woman he loves flings herself into his arms for the first time in a fierce access of passion. He clasped her long and hard, breast pressed against heaving breast, and lips meeting lips in a sharp shower of kisses. For some minutes they neither knew, nor felt, nor remembered, nor thought of anything else on earth save their present intoxication. But surely those minutes were in themselves worth living for! What mattered so many years of cruel and unnatural repression beside that one fierce draught at the hot wine of passion?
After a while, however, Will woke up to a true sense of the situation. Man though he was, and therefore aggressive, it was his duty first of all to think of protecting Linnet. He must protect her, if need were, even against her own impulses. He must learn what she meant, and what could have led her so suddenly to this strange decision?—?so unlike herself, so untrue, as it seemed, to her whole past history.
He unwound his arms gently, and placed the poor sobbing, throbbing girl, half-unresisted, in an arm-chair by the fireplace. Then he drew up a seat for himself very close by her side, took her hand in his, and soothed it gently with his other one. “He’s been cruel to you, Linnet, I can see,” he murmured softly at her ear. “Now, what has led you to this? Tell me all he has done to you.”
Thereat, Linnet, holding his hand hard, and looking deep into his eyes, yet crimson for very shame, began in her own tongue the story of their interview. She hid nothing from Will, and extenuated nothing. She told him in full how Joaquin Holmes had brought her Andreas’s letter to Philippina and offered it for sale; how she had refused to buy it, or have anything to do with it; how he had dropped it by accident and she had picked it up before him, intending to restore it to its rightful owner; how a scuffle had ensued, in the midst of which Andreas had unexpectedly entered; how in his wrath at being discovered, he had fairly lost his temper, and provoked her for once to an act of rebellion; and how in his rage at her note he had turned upon her bodily, and inflicted the marks Will could see so plainly now upon her person. Only the question of divorce she never touched on; a certain feminine delicacy made her shrink from alluding to it. Will listened to every word with profound attention, letting her tell her own tale her own way, unquestioned, but stroking her hand from time to time very gently with his own, or smoothing her fiery cheeks with the tips of his fingers in silent sympathy.
At last she ceased, and looked hard at Will, inquiringly.
“So I’ve come to you, Will,” she said, in her simple way, with childlike confidence; “and, now I&............