22/23 You will do it ?" cried Lord Roos. "'Tis but a few strokes of a pen." "Those few strokes will cost me my soul," she rejoined. "But if it must he so, it must. Give me the pen." And as Lord Roos complied, she signed the paper. "You may count upon your reward." "In a week's time, my lord," said Luke Hatton, still grinning, and shifting his glance from the half-fainting Countess to the young nobleman; "in a week's time" he repeated, "you will have to put on mourning for your wife--and in a month for your mother-in-law." And with a cringing bow, and moving with a soft cat-like footstep, he quitted the room, leaving the guilty pair alone together. |