"It is difficult to explain, Aunt," said Myra slowly, after much hesitation. "El Diablo Cojuelo professed to have fallen in love with me at first sight, and I was crazy enough to promise to become his wife if Tony offered to renounce me. Tony did renounce me when he was threatened with torture, and I was married to El Diablo Cojuelo in his presence last night. Tony failed me, and now I hate and despise him."
"Myra!" gasped Lady Fermanagh in horrified amazement. "Married to the brigand! You--you don"t mean actually married?"
"I don"t believe it could have been a proper marriage, although Don--er--Cojuelo swore the man who performed the service was an ordained priest," said Myra, avoiding her aunt"s eyes. "I don"t suppose it matters much now whether I am Cojuelo"s wife--or only his mistress."
"His mistress!" Lady Fermanagh was white to the lips as she repeated the words. "You mean that he----?"
The hot colour stained Myra"s pale face as she met her aunt"s eyes, and nodded her red-gold head in shamed a.s.sent.
"Myra, you are ruined!" Lady Fermanagh almost wailed, wringing her be-ringed hands. "What madness possessed you to offer to marry the brigand?"
"He taunted me--and Tony failed me," Myra answered, oddly reluctant to explain everything. "I wish I were dead."
"Does Don Carlos know?" asked her aunt, and again Myra flushed as she nodded a.s.sent.
"Yes, he alone knows, Aunt," she said, "and he alone knows whether the marriage service was a mockery or not."
Lady Fermanagh, still wringing her hands, rose and paced agitatedly up and down the room, her nimble brain busy trying to think of some way of saving the situation.
"I will see Don Carlos, Myra, beg him to keep your secret, beg him to a.s.sert that the so-called marriage was a farce and a mockery," she announced suddenly, after a long pause. "He is a chivalrous gentleman, and I know he will lie if necessary, to save your honour.... Why do you sneer, child? ... Don"t you realise that everything depends on Don Carlos, and how you behave towards Tony?"
"I have nothing but contempt for Tony now. I despise him."
"Don"t be a little fool," snapped Lady Fermanagh. "Your only hope of saving yourself is to forgive Tony for his cowardice and marry him. He will be grateful to you all his life. Don Carlos can tell him that the marriage ceremony was only a farce, and that he arranged with the bandit for your liberation immediately afterwards, or else explain that he helped you to escape. How did you escape, by the way? You have not told me. Did Don Carlos help?"
"Don Carlos showed me the way to open the secret door," answered Myra.
"Aunt Clarissa, nothing will induce me to marry Tony Standish now."
"But you must, you must!" insisted her aunt pa.s.sionately. "It is the only way of saving yourself. Think how you are placed, and what a ghastly tragedy it would be if it became known that you had surrendered yourself to a brigand. I will see Don Carlos at once, beg him, for your sake----"
"No! no!" interrupted Myra, springing to her feet. "I will not permit it, aunt. On no account must you appeal to Don Carlos. I will see him myself. You do not understand."
"No, I certainly do not understand, and I think you must be crazy,"
responded her aunt, with an impatient sigh. "Oh, Myra, don"t you realise in what a terrible position you have placed yourself? You lay the blame on Tony Standish, but now only he can save you."
"Tony Standish has nothing to do with the matter now," retorted Myra.
"Only Don Carlos can save me. I beg you, Aunt Clarissa, not to make any appeal to him. Leave me to settle the matter myself with him and to decide my own fate, work out my own destiny. Shall I see him now or wait till morning?"
"I think you had better wait till morning, and take time to consider how you are placed," said Lady Fermanagh, after a thoughtful pause, regarding Myra searchingly. "I fancy your mind must be temporarily deranged. Myra, are you keeping something back from me?"
"Everything depends on Don Carlos--and Cojuelo," Myra responded, evading the question. "Please say nothing to him, aunt, until I have spoken to him alone."
"Oh, the whole affair seems a crazy nightmare, and I don"t know what to make of it all," said her aunt, with another sigh. "I wish we had never come to this wretched, lawless place. You must have had a premonition of trouble when you at first refused Don Carlos"s invitation for no particular reason. Myra, my dear, I am sorry for you!"
Her feelings got the better of her, and with tears in her eyes she flung her arms around Myra and hugged her close to her breast. And Myra suddenly broke down, buried her face in her aunt"s shoulder, and cried like a hurt child.
"Better go to bed, dear," said Lady Fermanagh recovering herself after a few minutes. "We are all suffering from the strain and are not normal.... Go to bed, Myra, and try to make up your mind to go back to England with Tony to-morrow...."
CHAPTER XIX
Myra went to bed, but it was a long time before she could compose herself to woo sleep, so full was her mind of disturbing thoughts, so many problems did she find herself called on to solve.
"Does he love me?" That was the question that she put to herself time and again, and could not answer. "Do I love him?" was another. And at heart she knew that if she were certain that the answer to the first question was in the affirmative, she could answer the second in a like manner.
"What will it profit me if I denounce him?" she soliloquised. "He says he is at my mercy, but he can claim me, and boast that I offered to marry him, even if I do revenge myself by denouncing him. Always he seems to have the advantage of me. To save my "honour" now, and satisfy Aunt Clarissa, I shall either have to humble myself to ask him to marry me publicly, or else forgive Tony. Either course is repugnant."
She fell asleep at last, but was wrestling with her problem even in her jumbled dreams. She woke with a start, and with the impression strong upon her that someone or something had touched her face and her breast.
Scared, she groped for the electric switch and flashed on the light above the bed, and as she did so she remembered having awakened months previously at Auchinleven just in the same sort of fright, to find Don Carlos"s note on her pillow.
Some odd instinct or intuition told her that history had repeated itself, and it came hardly as a surprise to find a half-sheet of notepaper tucked into her nightdress close to her heart. With fingers that trembled slightly, Myra unfolded the note and read:
"Give me your heart and love, my wife, and I will devote my life to you. If you have no love, show no mercy."
Myra read the words again and again, sorely puzzled to decide what exactly they meant, wondering, incidentally, why Don Carlos had not awakened her to whisper what he had to say instead of leaving a note on her breast.
"Is he ashamed or afraid?" she asked herself--and could not answer her own question, nor a score of other questions which she put to herself as she tossed about restlessly for the remainder of the night, unable to sleep.
Her aunt, in dressing-gown and slippers, came to her room while she was sipping her early morning cup of tea.
"I hope you slept well, Myra dear, and are feeling better," she said.
"I have hardly slept at all, and feel a wreck. Have you made up your mind what to do?"
"Not quite," Myra answered. "I must see Don Carlos first. But I think I have decided to show no mercy to El Diablo Cojuelo."
"I don"t know what you mean," commented her aunt. "For heaven"s sake be sensible, Myra. It isn"t a question of showing mercy to the brigand, but of saving yourself and your reputation. I shall be in agonies of anxiety until you have made a decision."
"I shall be in agonies myself until I have decided--and perhaps afterwards," replied Myra enigmatically. "I shall get up now and get the ordeal over as quickly as possible."
She wasted no time over her toilet, and save that she was very pale, she looked her usual lovely self as she left her room and walked towards the staircase. She halted for a moment in indecision as she saw Antony Standish on the landing, evidently waiting for her, then went on.
"I say, Myra, don"t cut me," exclaimed Standish appealingly, nervously fingering his tie. "I"ve been waiting for you. I--I don"t want to try to excuse myself for what happened up in that cursed brigand"s den. My nerve deserted me completely."
"And you deserted me," interjected Myra coldly.
"You see, there was Don Carlos to be thought of as well as you, and--and I thought the only hope of being any help was to get away,"
Standish went on lamely. "Myra, I beg of you not to expose me to the world as a coward, and to forgive me. There are officials down below waiting to question you about what happened. They"ve been questioning me, and I"m afraid I didn"t tell them the truth. Now they"re questioning Don Carlos. From what I can make of it, someone has suggested that Don Carlos is in league with the brigand Cojuelo."
"Who suggested that?" asked Myra, with a convulsive start.
"I don"t know, but the officials wanted to know if I saw Don Carlos at Cojuelo"s place, and how I got away," Standish answered. "I told a lot of lies, and said that Cojuelo let me go when I promised to pay a ransom of fifty thousand pounds. Myra, you won"t give me away and show me up? I"ll shoot myself if you do. Myra, if you say nothing about my funking things, I"ll swear never to breathe a word about your marrying the brigand fellow."
"That is indeed kind!" commented Myra ironically. "I do not propose to make public what happened if I can avoid it, but possibly El Diablo Cojuelo may tell."
Standish drew a breath of relief and wiped his moist brow.