She rose abruptly: "I must be going."
Mr. Pemberton hobbled after her down the stairs to attend her to her carriage. A bitter wind was blowing. The coachman was walking the horses up and down. The footman who waited in the doorway, rugs on arm, ran into the street and beckoned to him. Lady Burdon watched the carriage, tapping her foot on the ground and frowning impatiently. A large piece of pink paper came blowing down the pavement, somersaulting along in a ridiculous fashion—heels over head, heels over head, grotesquely like a performing tumbler.
"Cold!" said Mr. Pemberton, briskly, rubbing his hands together. "Very cold!"
She made no reply. She was much out of temper. She was considerably beset. She was stiffening with an angry determination against abandoning her life in town. She was freshly aroused against Mr. Pemberton for his devoted loyalty to her husband's house—he had stung her by the manner of his acceptance of her threat to repudiate the contract; and by his reference to Rollo—he had hit her there.
The tumbling paper—a newspaper contents bill she could see—flung itself flat a few yards from them, throwing out its upper corners as it came to rest, for all the world like an exhausted tumbler throwing out his arms. The carriage drew up.
With a foot on the step: "You need not call on Lord Burdon till I have written to you—to arrange a date," she said.
Mr. Pemberton replied: "I certainly will not. I will await your letter, Lady Burdon."
She settled herself in her seat, drawing her furs about her. He was certainly a doddering old figure as he stood there—shrunken in the face, bent in the body, his few white hairs tumbled in the wind.
"Your house is very dear to me, Lady Burdon," he went on. "You must believe I act only in your best interests—in what I believe to be—"
She nodded to the footman, turned towards her from the box, and the carriage began to move. The tumbler contents bill leapt up with an absurd scurry, somersaulted down to them, and flung itself flat with a ridiculous air of exhaustion.