I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under the very wing of Death.

But oh, my wild woe, my frantic prayers! It was almost as if Satan himself were torturing me.

The one terror of the next few days was that my husband might return home, for I knew that at the first moment of his arrival the whole world of make-believe which my father and Alma were setting up around me would tumble about my head like a pack of cards.

He did not come, but he wrote. After saying that his political duties would keep him in London a little longer, he said:

"I hear that your father is getting you to give a great reception in honour of our home-coming. But why _now_, instead of three months ago?

_Do you know the reason?_"

As I read these last words I felt an icy numbness creeping up from my feet to my heart. My position was becoming intolerable. The conviction was being forced upon me that I had no right in my husband's house.

It made no difference that my husband's house was mine also, in the sense that it could not exist without me--I had no right to be there.

It made no difference that my marriage had been no marriage--I had no right to be there.

It made no difference that the man I had married was an utterly bad husband--I had no right to be there.

It made no difference that I was not really an adulterous wife--I had no right to be there.

Meanwhile Price, my maid, but my only real friend in Castle Raa, with the liberty I allowed her, was unconsciously increasing my torture.

Every night as she combed out my hair she gave me her opinion of my attitude towards Alma, and one night she said:

"Didn't I tell you she was only watching you, my lady? The nasty-minded thing is making mischief with his lordship. She's writing to him every day... . How do I know? Oh, I don't keep my eyes and my ears open downstairs for nothing. You'll have no peace of your life, my lady, until you turn that woman out of the house."

Then in a fit of despair, hardly knowing what I was doing, I covered my face with my hands and said:

"I had better turn myself out instead, perhaps."

The combing of my hair suddenly stopped, and at the next moment I heard Price saying in a voice which seemed to come from a long way off:

"Goodness gracious me! Is it like that, my lady?"

SEVENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER

Alma was as good as her word.

She did everything without consulting me--fixed the date of the reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent out invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which came from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting.

These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issued reached the grand total of five hundred.

As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so many guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed, and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up a vast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlands beyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together.

While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. I heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. The reception was to surpass in grandeur any fete ever held in Ellan. Not knowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened by this extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from the sight of it.

I could not escape.

I felt sure that Alma hated me with an implacable hatred, and that she was trying to drive me away, thinking that would be the easiest means to gain her own ends. For this reason, among others, the woman in me would not let me fly, so I remained and went through a purgatory of suffering.

Price, too, who had reconciled herself to my revelation, was always urging me to remain, saying:

"Why should you go, my lady? You are your husband's wife, aren't you?

Fight it out, I say. Ladies do so every day. Why shouldn't you?"

Before long the whole island seemed to be astir about our reception.

Every day the insular newspapers devoted columns to the event, giving elaborate accounts of what limitless wealth could accomplish for a single night's entertainment. In these descriptions there was much eulogy of my father as "the uncrowned king of Ellan," as well as praise of Alma, who was "displaying such daring originality," but little or no mention of myself.

Nevertheless everybody seemed to understand the inner meaning of the forthcoming reception, and in the primitive candour of our insular manners some of the visits I received were painfully embarrassing.

One of the first to come was my father's advocate, Mr. Curphy, who smiled his usual bland smile and combed his long beard while he thanked me for acting on his advice not to allow a fit of pique to break up a marriage which was so suitable from points of property and position.

"How happy your father must be to see the fulfilment of his hopes," he said. "Just when his health is failing him, too! How good! How gratifying!"

The next to come was the Bishop, who, smooth and suave as ever, congratulated me on putting aside all thoughts of divorce, so that the object of my marriage might be fulfilled and a good Catholic become the heir of Castle Raa.

More delicate, but also more distressing, was a letter from Father Dan, saying he had been forbidden my husband's house and therefore could not visit me, but having heard an angel's whisper of the sweet joy that was coming to me, he prayed the Lord and His Holy Mother to carry me safely through.

"I have said a rosary for you every day since you were here, my dear child, that you might be saved from a great temptation. And now I know you have been, and the sacrament of your holy marriage has fulfilled its mission, as I always knew it would. So God bless you, my daughter, and keep you pure and fit for eternal union with that blessed saint, your mother, whom the Lord has made His own."

More than ever after this letter I felt that I must fly from my husband's house, but, thinking of Alma, my wounded pride, my outraged vanity (as I say, the _woman_ in me), would not let me go.

Three weeks passed.

The pavilion had been built and was being hung with gaily painted bannerets to give the effect of the Colosseum as seen at sunset. A covered corridor connecting the theatre with the house was being lined with immense hydrangeas and lit from the roof by lamps that resembled stars.

A few days before the day fixed for the event Alma, who had been too much occupied to see me every day in the boudoir to which I confined myself, came up to give me my instructions.

The entertainment was to begin at ten o'clock. I was to be dressed as Cleopatra and to receive my guests in the drawing-room. At the sound of a fanfare of trumpets I was to go into the theatre preceded by a line of pages, and accompanied by my husband. After we had taken our places in a private box a great ballet, brought specially from a London music-hall, was to give a performance lasting until midnight. Then there was to be a cotillon, led by Alma herself with my husband, and after supper the dancing was to be resumed and kept up until sunrise, when a basketful of butterflies and doves (sent from the South of France) were to be liberated from cages, and to rise in a multicoloured cloud through the sunlit space.

I was sick and ashamed when I thought of this vain and gaudy scene and the object which I supposed it was intended to serve.

The end of it all was that I wrote to my father, concealing the real cause of my suffering, but telling him he could not possibly be aware of what was being done in his name and with his money, and begging him to put an end to the entertainment altogether.

The only answer I received was a visit from Nessy MacLeod. I can see her still as she came into my room, the tall gaunt figure with red hair and irregular features.

"Cousin Mary," she said, seating herself stiffly on the only stiff-backed chair, and speaking in an impassive tone, "your letter has been received, but your father has not seen it, his health being such as makes it highly undesirable that he should be disturbed by unnecessary worries."

I answered with some warmth that my letter had not been unnecessary, but urgent and important, and if she persisted in withholding it from my father I should deliver it myself.

"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, "I know perfectly what your letter is, having opened and read it, and while I am as little as yourself in sympathy with what is going on here, I happen to know that your father has set his heart on this entertainment, and therefore I do not choose that it shall be put off."

I replied hotly that in opening my letter to my father she had taken an unwarrantable liberty, and then (losing myself a little) I asked her by what right did she, who had entered my father's house as a dependent, dare to keep his daughter's letter from him.

"Cousin Mary," said Nessy, in the same impassive tone, "you were always self-willed, selfish, and most insulting as a child, and I am sorry to see that neither marriage nor education at a convent has chastened your ungovernable temper. But I have told you that I do not choose that you shall injure your father's health by disturbing his plans, and you shall certainly not do so."