fair Cousin, would care to take the risk."
"How do you know that?" she retorted. "There are no risks which I would not run, in order to free the man I love from the trammels of an undesired marriage."
Cousin John said nothing in reply. His eyes, still furtive in expression, were no longer restless. They were fixed upon the beautiful face before him, the luminous eyes, the daintily-curved mouth, the rounded chin—a transparent and exquisite mask which scarcely concealed now the strange and tortuous thoughts which chased one another behind that white brow, smooth as that of a child.
She held his gaze, willing that he should read those thoughts, wishing him to divine them; in fact, to save her the humiliation of framing them into words. But as he seemed disinclined to speak, she reiterated with slow and deliberate emphasis:
"There are no risks, Cousin, which I would not run."
"'Tis nobly said," he remarked, without attempting this time to conceal the sarcastic smile which played round his sensuous lips. "Odd's fish! the man whom you have honoured with such sublime devotion is lucky beyond compare."
"A truce on your sneers, Sir John," she retorted imperiously; "you said that there were several ways whereby that hateful marriage could be annulled. What are they?"
Sir John Ayloffe glanced down the length of his elegant surcoat; with careful hand he smoothed out a wrinkle which had appeared in the well-fitting breeches just above his knee, he readjusted the set of his fringed scarf, and of his lace-edged cravat. All this took time and kept Mistress Julia on tenter hooks, the while she felt as if her temples would burst from their throbbing.
Then, at last, Cousin John looked up at her again.
"Poison," he said drily; "an Italian stiletto an you prefer that method. An hired assassin in any event—"
A shudder ran down her spine. Had she really harboured these thoughts herself, and had Cousin John merely put her wild imaginings into words? Thus crudely put they horrified her—for the moment—and she looked down almost with loathing on the man who accompanied each grim suggestion with a leer, which caused his thick lips to part and to disclose a row of large, uneven teeth stained with tobacco juice and giving his face a cruel expression like that of a hyena.
"You see, there are always means, fair Cousin," continued Sir John with pleasing urbanity; "it is only a question of money—and of the risks which one is prepared to run. Beyond that, I believe, that the task, though difficult, can be accomplished in Paris. There are some amiable gentry there ever ready to do your bidding, whatever it may be, provided you are generous—"
She passed the gossamer handkerchief over her dry lips.
"I had not thought of crime," she murmured.
"Had you not?" he said blandly. "Yet 'tis the most easy solution of the difficulty."
"But there are others," she insisted.
"I fear not."
Again she paused, then continued, speaking very low, scarce above a whisper.
"You would help me, of course?"
"I could certainly go over to Paris," he said with marked hesitation, "always providing I were plentifully supplied with money—a voyage of reconnaissance, you understand—nothing more—"
"Which means that you will not help me."
"The risks are too great, Cousin—I—"
"You would not care to run them, in order to be of service to me?"
"Frankly—no!"
"And suppose, Cousin John," she now said more quietly, once more sitting down beside him, "supposing, I say for the sake of argument, that I were to come to you and tell you that I will give half of my fortune to the man who will at this juncture so ordinate matters that my marriage with the Earl of Stowmaries once more becomes not only feasible, but inevitable. What then?"
"Then—also for the sake of argument," he rejoined blandly, "I would ask you, fair Cousin, of what your fortune consists."
"Squire Peyton left me £20,000 and the principal is still intact."
"Deposited—where?"
"The bulk of it with Mr. Brooke the goldsmith. He pays me six per cent. per year thereon. It hath sufficed for my needs. No one—except you, Cousin, now—knows the extent of this fortune. Half of it will suffice me for pin money, once I am Countess of Stowmaries. My lord would marry me—if he were free—an I had not a groat to my name, nor more than one gown to my back. Ten thousand pounds shall be yours, Cousin, if you can bring this about."
"Call it £12,000, Mistress, and it shall be done," he said cynically.
"How will you do it?"
"Let that be my secret for the nonce."
"I'll give you no advance, remember," she said quickly, for she had seen the swift glitter of joy in his eyes, at the first mention of money, and she knew full well that she could not count on the most elementary feelings of honesty on the part of this unscrupulous gambler.
"Then I can do nothing," he concluded decisively.
"What do you mean?"
"Only this, fair Cousin, that putting aside the question—a somewhat humiliating one for me, you must admit—that your refusal to place certain funds in advance in my hands, implies a singular and—if I may say so—an ill-considered want of trust on your part; putting this question aside, I say, you must understand that nothing in this present world can be accomplished without money, and I am reduced to my last shilling."
"Have I not said that £10,000 shall be yours the day that my marriage with Lord Stowmaries is irrevocably settled?"
"£12,000," he corrected suavely.
"Very well, then, £12,000. We'll have the bond duly writ out and signed."
"And you, fair Cousin, will immediately place in my hands a first instalment of £2,000."
"Failing which?"
"As I have had the honour to tell you, I can do nothing. This is my last word, fair Cousin," he added, seeing that Mistress Julia still seemed inclined to hesitate.
There was silence in the little room for a few seconds, a silence all complete save for the solemn ticking of a little French clock over the hearth. Sir John Ayloffe lounging on the settee with one firm leg clad in the new-fashioned tight breeches stretched out at full length, the other doubled inwards, so that the satin shimmered and crackled over his knee, his jewelled hands toying with the lace cravat, or with the dark curls of his periwig, looked now the picture of supreme indifference.
It almost seemed as if £12,000 more or less in his vest pocket would affect him not at all. But the fleshy lids had half-closed over the prominent eyes, and from beneath their folds he was watching the fair young widow, who made no attempt to hide her hesitancy and her perturbation.
He knew quite well that his personality, the weight of his whole individuality, would win against her prudence in the end. He was fully aware that among the crowd of her several adorers, she had no one to whom she could confide her present troubles, no one whose aid she could with so much surety invoke. Few were so resourceful, none quite so unscrupulous, as Sir John Ayloffe where his own interests were at stake.
That £12,000 which was to be his price would mean the final ending of his shiftless career. He felt himself getting older every day, and the thought of what the morrow might bring—a morrow when he would no longer be active and alert, neither amusing nor interesting to those whose company was a necessity to his livelihood—that thought was embittering his present life, until at times he wondered whether a self-inflicted sword thrust to end a miserable existence were not the most desirable contingency after all.
How he would earn that £12,000 he did not know as yet. His secret was that he did not know. But he had lived for the past twenty years in sublime ignorance of the various shifts which he might be put to from day to