"Here beginneth," laughed Brandon, sliding his arm around her as she sat tense in every nerve gazing at the rain-blurred window.
She did not heed him; it was almost as if she had not heard. Her hands were tightly clasped upon one another, and her face was turned from him. There was no lamp inside the car, the only illumination proceeding from those without, showing them the driver huddled over the wheel, but shedding little light into the interior.
He tightened his arm about her, laying his other hand upon her clasped ones.
"By Jove, little girl, you're cold!" he said.
She was--cold as ice. She parted her fingers stiffly to free them from his grasp.
"I--I'm quite comfortable," she assured him, without turning her head. "Please don't trouble about me."
But he was not to be thus discouraged.
"You can't be comfortable," he argued. "Why, you're shivering. Let me see what I can do to make things better."
He tried to draw her to him, but she resisted almost angrily.
"Oh, do leave me alone! I'm not uncomfortable. I'm only thinking."
"Well, don't be silly!" he urged. "It's no use thinking at this stage. The thing is done now, and well done. We shall be man and wife by this time to-morrow. We'll go to Paris, eh, and have no end of a spree."
"Perhaps," she said, not looking at him or yielding an inch to his persuasion.
It was plain that for some reason she desired to be left in peace, and after a brief struggle with himself, Brandon decided that he would be wise to let her have her way. He leant back and crossed his arms in silence.
The car sped along at a pace which he found highly satisfactory. He had absolute faith in Fricker's driving and knowledge of the roads.
They had been travelling for the greater part of an hour, when Doris at length relaxed from her tense attitude and lay back in her corner, nestling into it with a long shiver.
Brandon was instantly on the alert.
"I'm sure you are cold. Here's a rug here. Let me--"
"Oh, do please leave me alone!" she said, with a sob. "I'm so horribly tired."
Beseechingly almost she laid her hand upon his arm with the words.
The touch fired him. He considered that he had been patient long enough. Abruptly he caught her to him.
"Come, I say," he said, half-laughing, half in savage earnest, "I can't have you crying on what's almost our wedding trip!"
He certainly did not expect the absolutely furious resistance with which she met his action. She thrust him from her with the strength of frenzy.
"How dare you?" she cried passionately. "How dare you touch me, you--you hateful cad?"
For the moment, such was his astonishment, he suffered her to escape from his hold. Then, called into activity by her unreasoning fury, the devil in him leapt suddenly up and took possession. With a snarling laugh he gripped her by the arms, holding her by brutal force.
"You little wild cat!" he said in a voice that shook between anger and amusement. "So this is your gratitude, is it? I am to give all and receive nothing for my pains. Then let me make it quite clear to you here and now that that is not my intention. I will be kind to you, but you must be kind to me, too. The benefit is to be mutual."
It was premature. In his heart he knew it, but she had provoked him to it and there was no turning back now. He resented the provocation, that was all, and it made him the more brutally inclined towards her.
As for Doris, she fought and tore at his grasp like a mad creature; and when he mastered her, when, still laughing between his teeth, he forced her face upwards and kissed it fiercely and violently, she shrieked between his kisses, shrieked and shrieked again.
The sudden grinding of the brake recalled Brandon to his senses. The fool was actually stopping the car. He relinquished his hold upon the girl to dash his hand against the window in front.
"Drive on, curse you, drive on!" he shouted through the glass. "I'll let you know if we want to stop."
But the car stopped in spite of him. The chauffeur, shining from head to foot in his oil-skins, sprang to the ground. A moment and he was at the door, had wrenched it open, and was peering within.
"What are you gaping there for, you fool?" raved Brandon, his hand upon Doris, who was suddenly straining forward. "It's all right, I tell you. Go on."
"I am going on," the chauffeur responded calmly through his mask. "But I am not taking you any farther, Major Brandon. So tumble out at once, you dirty, thieving hound!"
The words, the tone, the attitude, flashed such a revelation upon Doris that she cried out in amazement, and then with a revulsion of feeling so great that it deprived her of all speech she threw herself forward and clung to the masked chauffeur in an agony of tears.
Brandon was staring at him with dropped jaw.
"Who the blazes are you?" he said.
"You know me, I think," the chauffeur responded quietly. He was pressing Doris back into her seat with absolute steadiness. "We have met before. I was present at your first wedding ten years ago, and--as a junior counsel--I helped to divorce you a few months after. My name is Vivian Caryl."
He freed a hand to push up his mask. His pale face with its heavy-lidded eyes stared, supremely contemptuous, into Brandon's suffused countenance. His composure was somehow disconcerting.
"Suppose you get out," he suggested. "I can talk to you then in a language you will understand."
"Curse you!" bawled Brandon. "Where's Fricker?"
Caryl shrugged his shoulders.
"You have seen him since I have. Are you going to get out? Ah, I thought you would."
He stood aside to allow him to do so, and then stepped back to shut the door. He did not utter a word to the girl cowering within, but that action of his was a mute command. She crouched in the dark and listened, but she did not dare to follow or to flee.