"Welcome, my dearest wife!" he exclaimed, embracing her. Then he closed the door. She saw an odious, triumphant smile on his sharp, handsome features, and in his bright dark eyes. He was carefully dressed. Although only half a Frenchman, he had the southern taste for fantasy in costume. A diamond stud shone in his embroidered shirt-front, a button-hole of some white, strongly-scented blossom was in his coat. "You are frightened, my own!" he caressingly said, with a suggestion of proprietorship which made her inwardly shudder. "Don’t be! We are quite alone in the house, you and I! And I will take precautions to keep us so," he added, returning to the door and putting up the chain. CHAPTER XV Joan staggered against the wall with sudden horror as Victor walked away and adjusted the chain which shut out possible intruders. Alone in the house--with him--and he was legally her husband! Could she face it? "I must, I will!" she said to herself, clenching her teeth and summoning all the fortitude she possessed to her aid. As he turned, he noticed her pallor, the wild glitter in her great eyes. "At bay," he thought. "Mad with passion for another man--hates me--what a delicious situation!" "Come upstairs, dearest," he said, in the new, abhorrently caressing tone which seemed to curdle her blood. "What? The staircase is too narrow for us both? Then I will go first." He tripped lightly up the steps, which were covered with oilcloth, and after turning up the gas on the landing, stood smiling upon her as she slowly, reluctantly, ascended. As she reached the top, he opened a door, and she saw a well-lighted room with a book-case, good, solid chairs, and a new Kidderminster carpet. But a curious odour floated out to meet her. "What an odd smell of drugs!" she exclaimed, standing on the threshold. It seemed to take her back years, that pungent odour, to the schoolroom--when she went into the schoolmistress’ little medicine-room to be physicked. "I am very sorry, but I happen to be on sufferance in these rooms--their real tenant is a medical student, who has got leave because of a series of catastrophes in his family. Look here! This looks like business, doesn’t it?" He opened a cupboard door, and she saw a skeleton hanging on a peg. "Oh!" she cried, shrinking back. He laughed. "I thought you were strong minded," he said. "But somehow I am rather glad you are not. But you are not going to stand there all the evening, are you, because there are a few harmless bones in the cupboard? There are worse things in creation than skeletons!" He spoke meaningly. She watched him as he seated himself in a revolving chair by a writing table. There was a certain insolence in his manner and tone, as well as in his depreciatory stare, as he gazed slightingly at her and twisted his small black moustache. A diamond twinkled on his little finger.