he has also learned. He has left an important letter for you at their office. They will forward it as soon as they learn your address.
'Since I came back from Passy I have thought it prudent to set down in writing an exact account of everything that happened there under my own observation. Mr. Mountjoy has read my story, and thinks that I ought without delay to send a copy of it to you. I therefore send you one, in which I have left out all the names, and put in A, B, and C instead, by his directions. He says that you will have no difficulty in filling up the names.
'I remain, my dear Lady,
'Your ladyship's most obedient and humble servant,
'FANNY MERE.'
This letter, with the document, was dispatched to Brussels that night. And this is the trouble which Iris brought upon herself by answering Fanny's advertisement.
CHAPTER LX
ON THE EVE OF A CHANGE
IRIS returned to Louvain by way of Paris. She had to settle up with the doctor.
He obeyed her summons and called upon her at the hotel.
'Well, my lady,' he began in his gross voice, rubbing his hands and laughing, 'it has come off, after all; hasn't it?'
'I do not desire, Dr. Vimpany, to discuss anything with you. We will proceed to settle what business we have together.'
'To think that your ladyship should actually fall in!' he replied. 'Now I confess that this was to me the really difficult part of the job. It is quite easy to pretend that a man is dead, but not so easy to touch his money. I really do not see how we could have managed at all without your co-operation. Well, you've had no difficulty, of course?'
'None at all.'
'I am to have half.'
'I am instructed to give you two thousand pounds. I have the money here for you.'
'I hope you consider that I deserve this share?'
'I think, Dr. Vimpany, that whatever you get in the future or the present you will richly deserve. You have dragged a man down to your own level—'
'And a woman too.'
'A woman too. Your reward will come, I doubt not.'
'If it always takes the form of bank-notes I care not how great the reward may be. You will doubtless, as a good Christian, expect your own reward—for him and for you?'
'I have mine already,' she replied sadly. 'Now, Dr. Vimpany, let me pay you, and get rid of your company.'
He counted the money carefully and put it in the banker's bag in his coat-pocket. 'Thank you, my lady. We have exchanged compliments enough over this job.'
'I hope—I pray—that we may never set eyes on you again.'
'I cannot say. People run up against each other in the strangest manner, especially people who've done shady things and have got to keep in the background.'
'Enough!—enough!'
'The background of the world is a very odd place, I assure you. It is full of interesting people. The society has a piquancy which you will find, I hope, quite charming. You will be known by another name, of course?'
'I shall not tell you by what name—'
'Tut—tut! I shall soon find out. The background gets narrower when you fall into misery.'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, Lady Harry, that your husband has no idea whatever as to the value of money. The two thousand that you are taking him will vanish in a year or two. What will you do then? As for myself, I know the value of money so well that I am always buying the most precious and delightful things with it. I enjoy them immensely. Never any man enjoyed good things so much as I do. But the delightful things cost money. Let us be under no illusions. Your ladyship and your noble husband and I all belong to the background; and in a year or two we shall belong to the needy background. I daresay that very soon after that the world will learn that we all belong to the criminal background. I wish your ladyship a joyful reunion with your husband!'
He withdrew, and Iris set eyes on him no more. But the prophecy with which he departed remained with her, and it was with a heart foreboding fresh sorrows that she left Paris and started for Louvain.
Here began the new life—that of concealment and false pretence. Iris put off her weeds, but she never ventured abroad without a thick veil. Her husband, discovering that English visitors sometimes ran over from Brussels to see the Hotel de Ville, never ventured out at all till evening. They had no friends and no society of any kind.
The house, which stood secluded behind a high wall in its garden, was in the quietest part of this quiet old city; no sound of life and work reached it; the pair who lived there seldom spoke to each other. Except at the midday breakfast and the dinner they did not meet. Iris sat in her own room, silent; Lord Harry sat in his, or paced the garden walks for hours.
Thus the days went on monotonously. The clock ticked; the hours struck; they took meals; they slept; they rose and dressed; they took meals again—this was all their life. This was all that they could expect for the future.
The weeks went on. For three months Iris endured this life. No news came to her from the outer world; her husband had even forgotten the first necessary of modern life—the newspaper. It was not the ideal life of love, apart from the world, where the two make for themselves a Garden of Eden; it was a prison, in which two were confined together who were kept apart by their guilty secret.
