She kissed the girl, rather coldly this time, and turned to go.

Mary stood quite motionless during the embrace, as if in a state of unconsciousness.

But after Catherine had gone a few yards across the lawn, the girl awoke suddenly from her stupefaction. She took two or three rapid steps in the direction of the retreating figure, then feeling her strength fail her she stood still, and stretching out her arms, shrieked out, "Stop! stop!

stop!"

Catherine was startled by the wildness of the cry, and turned round and looked at her.

"Stop!" once more cried the girl with fierce energy as she approached the woman. "You _shall_ know before you go--I _do_ love him--not Mr.

Hudson--but another--Dr. Duncan!"

It had come at last.

Catherine strode up to her and grasped her by the arm.

"Do I hear you aright? You tell me _that_--you love him?" she exclaimed savagely.

Mary gave one low wail and fell fainting to the ground.

One of the little children who was at the other end of the lawn saw her fall, and ran indoors to tell her mother.

Mrs. White was soon on the spot. She found Mary lying insensible on the gra.s.s, and standing by her, deadly pale, with her fists clenched, and a fierce glare in her eyes, Catherine King.

"What was the cause of this?" asked the little woman, as she administered restoratives to the girl.

Catherine made no reply. The Fury of despairing jealousy had possessed the woman; she scarcely knew where she was, in the first burst of her mad anger; but after a few moments she recollected herself, and said in a hard voice that concealed every emotion:

"My presence seems to do her harm. I will go away. Good-bye, Mrs. White; I see the fly has arrived," then abruptly, without another word, she walked out of the cottage gate and was driven off. She never so much as once turned her head to look at the insensible girl.

Mrs. White was intensely amazed. "And this," she thought, "is the aunt Mary describes as having so much affection for her!"

The White Knight had indeed considerably foiled Catherine King's scheme.

It even looked as if he would checkmate her soon.

CHAPTER XXI.

CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

It was evening, in Mrs. King's parlour in Maida Vale. Darkness had set in, but the wretched woman who was sitting over the neglected and nearly extinct fire, alone with her gloomy thoughts, did not rise to light the lamp.

After nearly a week of stormy and conflicting emotions and ever-changing plans, the troubled mind had calmed somewhat. Catherine had decided to put the matter of Mary's desertion before the Inner Circle, and was even then awaiting the arrival of Sisters Susan and Eliza, whom she had summoned for that object.

Mary must die! Looking at it from every point of view, she could see no other way out of the difficulty. The girl could not be a wife and a baby-murderer, or even an innocent accomplice of baby-murderers at the same time. Yes, Mary must die! But Catherine could not trust herself.

She could not look at Mary's case with an unbia.s.sed mind. Her great hate and love of the girl prevented her from considering the question merely as it affected the interests, the safety of the Secret Society. She felt this keenly, so, as she above all things desired to act with strict justice, and knew that her present mood might as readily drive her to undue leniency as to unnecessary sternness, she determined to leave the judgment of Mary entirely in the hands of the other sisters of the Inner Circle. She would put the whole case before them: she would abide by their unimpa.s.sioned verdict.

But yet she could scarcely doubt what that verdict would be. How could such a society exist unless deserters were removed beyond all possibility of their becoming traitors?

So Catherine sat in the deserted room awaiting the two Sisters who were to decide her darling's doom. How dreary that room now appeared to the miserable creature! There was no Mary there now to lighten it, and she knew that there never again would be. The only human affection of her heart had been ruthlessly trampled upon. Were it not for the scheme she would have died; but she still had that to care for, and for that alone she must live for the remainder of her loveless life.

At last there came a ring at the street-door bell. She started, she felt fearfully nervous now that the interview on which so much depended was so near.

The maid-servant ushered in Sister Eliza and Sister Susan.

Sister Eliza, fresh from the comfortable and substantial dinner, at which she had just been presiding in her Bayswater boarding-house, looked stout and beaming as usual; but Susan Riley looked pale and ill, her eyes, surrounded by dark circles, glittered strangely, and their contracted pupils showed that she had not yet abandoned her practice of laudanum-drinking. She was even then excited with the drug; her brain was on fire with it.

Catherine rose and motioned the women to two chairs. Until the indispensable green tea came up they spoke little and on indifferent matters. The anxiety and nervousness of the Chief communicated itself to the others: even the volatile Susan was subdued in her manner.

The servant brought up the tea and went downstairs. Then there was a complete silence for some minutes, each waiting for another to speak first. Catherine was staring fixedly into the fire, with a look on her face that awed the two women, they imagined that some great calamity must of a certainty have befallen the Cause.

At last Sister Eliza spoke, she could bear the suspense no longer.

"Sister Catherine, you say you have summoned us to discuss some important matter?"

The Chief looked up, and replied with a forced calmness in her voice: "Yes; I wish to put before you the conduct of one of the Sisterhood--of Mary Grimm, in fact."

"I suspected her!" put in Susan eagerly, the shadow of fear pa.s.sing from her face; she had not forgotten her hatred for Mary, though so far she had found no opportunity for gratifying it.

"Mary wishes to leave us," continued the Chief.

"So I suspected," broke in again the exultant voice of Susan.

"I have discovered that she has formed an attachment with a man."

"I knew it, and you have called us here to decide what shall be done with the traitor?"

"She is not a traitor yet."

Sister Eliza spoke next. "But if you do not take care, she soon will be a traitor, Sister Catherine. I too have heard something of this before; she is in love with that doctor. You should not have allowed her to go to his sister's house at Farnham. I thought at the time it was very imprudent."

"It was the inevitable, Sister Eliza--the girl was dying," replied the Chief.

"It would have been safer had she died."

"Perhaps so; but the question before is, what is to be done now?"

Catherine spoke sharply. She was considerably nettled at the cool and unfeeling way in which the sisters entered on the discussion, though she knew that it was unreasonable on her part to expect anything else.

It was Susan's turn to speak, and she did so in an irritatingly calm and business-like voice.

"I can only see one answer to that question."

"Well!"

"Mary must be put out of the way."

A long pause followed; the three women sipped their strong tea in silence.