"Your penitence is of sudden growth," I sneered.
"I need a wife less than a servant who will nurse me!" I said coldly.
I looked away and reflected deeply on her words. But though I tried, I could not understand her, and ignorance intensified distrust. Yet I foresaw that a period of sickness lay before me, and I could not believe that she had saved me to again betray me. Some one I must lean upon--it was imperative. She watched me in most evident anxiety, scarcely breathing the while.
I felt my lip curl. It was, then, poverty which had inspired her abject self-surrender--and perhaps, too, fear. No doubt she relied upon my aid to escape Sir Charles Venner's vengeance.
She read my thought, and murmured very low: "As God hears me, you are unjust, monsieur!"
"We shall see!" I sneered. "Stop the phaeton!" We had come upon a cab-stand. Beudant transferred me into a fourwheeler, and Marion thereupon commanded him to return to Staines. When he had departed, I gave her my Bruton Street address, and thither, in perfect silence, we proceeded. My gaolers had disdained to rob me, but my pockets contained less than four pounds, and it was necessary to provide immediately against the illness I anticipated.
When we had arrived, I explained to her the situation of my room, and bade her bring me down my cash-box, in which reposed my cheque-book and all my bank receipts. The box I knew was locked, but, in order to ensure its privacy, I obliged her to detach my latch-key from the others and give me back the bunch. She obeyed me with a sigh, and in five minutes she placed the cash-box in my hands.
"Where to now, monsieur?" she asked humbly, with downcast eyes.
She spoke to the driver and resumed her seat. Upon arriving at our destination, two porters carried me within, and I engaged two adjoining rooms on the third floor, to the larger of which I was carefully transported. To all seeming, I was a wounded man in charge of a nurse, for Marion wore her uniform, and I explained to the clerk that our luggage would presently follow us from the station, where we had left it. We were thus able to circumvent Mother Grundy's spirit of conventionality without the necessity of answering a single question.