"Go back to the hotel, and leave that person in possession?" cried Flossy, with fine and virtuous scorn. "Are you mad, General? I will not put up with such a thing for a moment! She will go out of this house before I go!"
These words reached Cynthia's ears. The girl simply smiled. The smile said, as plainly as words could have done, that she would not leave Hubert Lepel's rooms unless she was taken away from them by force.
Meanwhile Mrs. Jenkins was whispering and explaining, the General was expostulating, and Flossy waxed apparently more and more irate every moment. Cynthia, with her hand on Hubert's pulse, felt it growing faster; his incoherent words were spoken with energy; he was beginning to raise his head from the pillow and gaze about him with wild excited eyes. She turned sharply towards the visitors.
"Go into the other room at once!" she said, with sudden decision. "You have aroused him already—you have done him harm! Keep silence or go, if you wish to save his life!"
The passionate ring of her voice, low though it was, had its effect. The General stopped short in a sentence; Mrs. Jenkins looked at the bed with a frightened air; Flossy, with an impatient gesture, walked towards the sitting-room. But at the door she paused and looked back at Cynthia, whose eyes were still fixed upon her. What there was in that look perhaps no one else could see; but it magnetised Cynthia. The girl rose from her knees, gently withdrew her hand from Hubert's nerveless fingers, and signed to Mrs. Jenkins to take her place. Then, after watching for a moment to see that the patient lay quietly and did not seem distressed by her departure, she followed Mrs. Vane into the other room. The General hovered about the door, uncertain whether to go or to remain.
The two women faced each other silently. They were both beautiful, but they bore no likeness one to the other.
There could not have been a more complete contrast than that presented by Florence Vane and Cynthia Westwood as they confronted each other in the dim light of Hubert's sitting-room. Cynthia stood erect, looking very tall and pale in her straight black gown; her large dark eyes were heavy from fatigue and grief, her lips had taken a pathetic downward curve, and her dusky hair had been pushed back carelessly from her fine brow. There was a curious dignity about her—a dignity which seemed to proceed chiefly from her own absence of self-consciousness, swallowed up as this had been in the depth of a great sorrow. Opposite to her stood Florence, self-conscious and alert in every nerve and vein, but hiding her agitation under an exterior of polished grace and studiedly haughty courtesy, her fair beauty framed in an admirable setting of exquisite colors and textures, her whole appearance indescribably dainty and delicate, like that of some rare Eastern bird which hesitates where to set its foot in a strange place.
Thus the two saw each other; and Flossy felt vaguely that Cynthia ought to be at a disadvantage, but that in some strange and miraculous manner she was not. Indeed it was Cynthia who took the lead and spoke first.
"If you wish to speak to me," she said, "I am here; but I cannot leave Mr. Lepel for long."
"I have no wish to speak—necessity alone compels me," said Mrs. Vane, giving the girl a haughty stare from under her half-closed eyelids. "I am compelled, I fear, to ask you a few questions. I presume that a nurse is coming?"