But now, now in the horror and darkness of the post-chaise, the lawyer's
warnings and the old woman's misgivings returned on her with crushing
weight; and more and heavier than these, her old belief in the
heartlessness, the perfidy of the man of rank. At the statement that a
man of the class with whom she had commonly mixed could so smile, while
he played the villain, as to deceive not only her eyes but her
heart--she would have laughed. But on the mind that lay behind the
smooth and elegant mask of a gentleman's face she had no lights; or
only the old lights which showed it desperately wicked. Applying these
to the circumstances, what a lurid glare they shed on his behaviour!
How quickly, how suspiciously quickly, had he succumbed to her charms!
How abruptly had his insouciance changed to devotion, his impertinence
to respect! How obtuse, how strangely dull had he been in the matter of
her claims and her identity! Finally, with what a smiling visage had he
lured her to her doom, showed her to his tools, settled to a nicety the
least detail of the crime!
More weighty than any one fact, the thing he had said to her on the
staircase at Oxford came back to her mind. 'If you were a lady,' he had
lisped in smiling insolence, 'I would kiss you and make you my wife.' In
face of those words, she had been rash enough to think that she could
bend him, ignorant that she was more than she seemed, to her purpose.
She had quoted those very words to him when she had had it in her mind
to surrender--the sweetest surrender in the world. And all the time he
had been fooling her to the top of her bent. All the time he had known
who she was and been plotting against her devilishly--appointing hour
and place and--and it was all over.
It was all over. The sunny visions of love and joy were done! It was all
over. When the sharp, fierce pain of the knife had done its worst, the
consciousness of that remained a dead weight on her brain. When the
paroxysm of weeping had worn itself out, yet brought no relief to her
passionate nature, a kind of apathy succeeded. She cared nothing where
she was or what became of her; the worst had happened, the worst been
suffered. To be betrayed, cruelly, heartlessly, without scruple or care
by those we love--is there a sharper pain than this? She had suffered
that, she was suffering it still. What did the rest matter?
Mr. Thomasson might have undeceived her, but the sudden stoppage of the
chaise had left no place in the tutor's mind for aught but terror. At
any moment, now the chaise was at a stand, the door might open and he be
hauled out to meet the fury of his pupil's eye, and feel the smart of
his brutal whip. It needed no more to sharpen Mr. Thomasson's long
ears--his eyes were useless; but for a time crouching in his corner and
scarce daring to breathe, he heard only the confused muttering of
several men talking at a distance. Presently the speakers came nearer,
he caught the click of flint on steel, and a bright gleam of light
entered the chaise through a crack in one of the shutters. The men had
lighted a lamp.