"
So it was settled--the fiendish plan that was to torture an innocent
woman until she was driven to shame and almost death. He wrote the
letter. Marion received it with silent disdain; she had told him that it
must all be at an end, and it should be so.
Then, as Adelaide had wisely forseen, there fell silence between them.
Adelaide wrote at intervals; in one letter she said:
"Allan has told me what passed between you." She made no further
comment; after a time she ceased even to mention his name in her
letters, and then Marion believed herself, in all honesty, free. She did
not forget her promise; she interested herself greatly in procuring
commissions for Allan Lyster; she persuaded Lord Ridsdale to order
several pictures from him; she sent very handsome presents to Adelaide,
and thanked Heaven that never again while she lived would she have a
secret.
How relieved, how happy she felt! Life was not the same to her, now that
this terrible burden was removed. She asked herself how she ever could
have been so blind and mad as to believe the feeling she entertained for
Allan Lyster was love.
A year passed, and, except for the favors she conferred upon him, the
orders that she had obtained for him, no news came to Marion of the man
who had been her lover. How was she to know that the web was weaving
slowly around her? It was silence like that of a tiger falling back for
a spring.
Then the great event of her life came to Marion Arleigh.
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