"God grant it!" he piously exclaimed; and for that night at least his prayer seemed answered--for after he and the other guests had departed, Joan retired to her room and seeking her couch, slept more tranquilly and dreamlessly than she had done since those evil days when Victor Mercier cajoled her into marrying him--and when almost on the morrow, she had learnt that her husband was an absconding criminal. She awoke, too, with a new sense of safety--and of the very present refuge in her trouble--Vansittart. "Even if he got to know--he would not turn against me, I am sure he would not!" she told herself, as she lay and thought of him, smiling. For once she looked at peace and happy. "I feel it! How strange it would be if it turned out that he would have to fight my battles with uncle? But such things do happen--in real life as well as in fiction." She lay and mused happily on the delightful subject--Vansittart, and the coming days when they would be all in all to each other--until Julie came with the hot water and the letters. Then--it was as if death itself laid a cold hand on her heart--for there was one in the detested writing of Victor Mercier. He had dared--risked--writing to her openly in her own home, under her uncle’s roof! What did it mean? CHAPTER XIII The latent sense of being arbiter of a beautiful young woman’s fate--which had been perhaps Victor Mercier’s only sentiment in Joan’s regard during their separation--developed, on that evening they met in the Regent’s Park, into a certain passionate exultation in possessing her for his own, evidently against her wish. But when he felt convinced, from Paul Naz’ innocent betrayal of society talk, that the girl who was legally his wife had a lover, and that already their names were coupled together, the smouldering resentment that her girlish passion for him was dead, burst into a fierce flame of absolute hatred. He had enjoyed abandoning himself to the enjoyment of Vera’s love with a double zest--because it was a secret revenge upon Joan. He had gone about after he had received Joan’s letter postponing their next meeting, making subtle and refined plans for the long-drawn-out punishment of his "faithless wife," as he termed her. He told himself he was glad of a week’s interlude. If he had seen her then, he might have betrayed his wrath and desire for revenge. His tactics were quite the opposite of that. "First, I must compromise her," he decided. "I must have her actions now, at the actual moment, in my power--she must have been alone with me in such a way as to turn this noble lord who wants her against her, should he know of it! Yes--if she had refused to see me, she might have gone in for a divorce! But if I have her condonation for the past on my side, she will have no case--even if she would not have entirely damned herself with this cur of a lover!"