"Wife!" She sank back and groaned. "I shall never be any man’s wife!" she said. "Why? Because I do not want to be! That is all! Because I never shall and will be!" Was she crazy? He rose, slowly, and contemplated her. No! There were anguish and suffering in the lines about her mouth and eyes--in those lustrous, strained brown orbs--but no insanity. "We must talk it all over. I must--I mean, I may see you to-morrow, may I not?" he gently said, drawing a chair near, and seating himself between her and the door, he besought at least one interview, so that they should "understand each other." He had but just obtained a reluctant consent to a _tête-à-tête_ on the morrow, when the door suddenly opened, a gay young voice cried, "surely there can’t be any one in here!" and a bright face peeped round the curtain and at once disappeared. "Lady Violet!" exclaimed Joan, starting up. "She has seen us!" "And if she has?" asked her lover, mystified by her terror at having been discovered alone with him by the Duke’s eldest daughter. Still, with the promise of an elucidatory interview, he obeyed her wishes, and left her to return to the ballroom without his escort. She did not linger: she almost fled, scared, from the boudoir through the drawing-rooms, into the corridor. Which way led to the ballroom? Hesitating, glancing right and left, she saw one of the picturesque black-clad servitors coming towards her. She would ask him. As he advanced, the man’s face riveted her attention. Not because of its wax mask-like regularity, and the intent, glittering stare of the black eyes which fixed themselves boldly upon her own; but because the countenance was singularly like one which haunted her memory--waking and sleeping--the hideous ghost of her foolish past. "Heavens--how terribly like him!" she murmured to herself, unconsciously, involuntarily shrinking back against the wall as he came near. Like! As the man came up, and halted, she gave a strangled cry like the pitiful dying wail of a poor hare. "I see, you recognize me," he said, in a low voice, with a bitter little smile. "Don’t be alarmed! I am not going to claim you publicly, here, to-night. But if you do not want me to call and send in my credentials at your uncle’s house, you will meet me to-morrow at the old place, in the evening. I shall be there at eight, and will wait till you come. Do you understand?" "Yes," she whispered. As he passed on and opening a baize door, disappeared, she stood gazing after him as if his words had been a sword-thrust, and she was a dead woman. CHAPTER IV Joan stood in the corridor, white, hardly breathing, as if turned to stone, her beautiful eyes riveted on the spot where the man who was once her lover had disappeared. "Victor!" she thought, as her whole being seemed to writhe in an agony of despair. "Victor--and in the duke’s livery--am I mad?"