Turner looked at her, and then with a restless movement at me. The color came up among his wrinkles, and his features began to work as if some unfinished resolution had set them in motion. Before he could speak, however, Lady Catherine’s voice broke in again,
“And your wife—my good Turner—really I must have a sight of her and this pretty home of yours—quite a bijou in the grounds, truly!”
Placing a richly enamelled glass to her eyes, the lady took a quiet survey of the building before Turner could find words to answer her.
Never had I seen the old man so agitated. The color came and went beneath his wrinkles; his thin lips grew pale and purple by turns; his state of irresolution was painful.
“I will step in and see your wife!” said Lady Catherine, dropping her glass to the full length of its Venetian chain, and looking around for the door.
Now Turner became calm; every muscle and nerve settled down. He stood more firmly on the ground, and looking his tormentor steadily in the face, answered,
“Some one must have been joking at my expense, my lady. I have no wife!”
“No wife!” exclaimed Lady Catherine, with a start that even I could see was premeditated. “No wife—and this child?”
“You are mistaken,” said Turner, “this is not my child. Yourself saw me when I took her up from your own door-stone, or rather the door-stone of Greenhurst, eight years ago.”
A cold smile curled Lady Catherine’s lip. She lifted her glass again and eyed me through it. “I remember the circumstance,” she said, and the hateful smile deepened—“I remember, too, that a child disappeared very mysteriously but a short time before from this nest—two children in fact—if my people told me aright.”