“The game, madam! The game, gentlemen!”
But it was idle, even for the bravest spirit among her guests, to deny the invisible Presence in their midst. And when, following upon a confused rumour on the stairs, a great cry of anguish and terror was raised at the very door of the room; when, staggering and wringing his hands, a distraught youth rushed in, it was almost as if his voice was that of the unacknowledged Fear; his livid face its very countenance.
“For the Lord’s sake, a cup of the plague water!”
“Brother!” cried Diana. She sprang toward him. But hastily, even roughly, Rockhurst thrust her on one side, and the boy collapsed into the nearest chair.
Whereupon Lionel, coming forward with his usual coolness, ran his fingers, with a movement the sinister significance of which most people had learned to interpret these days, under the fair curls of the bent head, feeling behind the ears.
“Pshaw—’tis nothing!… Sheer poltroonery,” cried he, and laughed loudly, and struck his cousin’s hunched shoulders with no gentle hand. “Art a pretty fellow to come thus, bellowing like a calf, into the presence of ladies!”
“Curse it!” moaned the lad. “I have just knocked against two women carrying a coffin! They howled like sick cats.” Sinking his head on his hands once more, he rocked himself backward and forward. “Oh, this wicked London! Oh, the judgment of God!”
“Edward!” cried Lady Chillingburgh imperiously. Her voice dominated the horrified whispers of Sir John and Foulkes, Madame de Mantes’s hysterical cries, young Edward’s obtrusive groans.
But there was a force stronger than her in her house that night. Sir John Farringdon unceremoniously poured himself a bumper of wine, drank it hastily, his eye on the door toward which Foulkes was already uneasily edging. Madame de Mantes, who had been sobbing out inarticulate words in her own tongue, broke into babbling laughter.