She stammered the beginning of a denial, but the words died on her lips. She was too stiff with alarm to be able to speak. After all, vanity is a great power even in the noblest of us.
"Miss Delarayne," Lord Henry continued, "you and I can keep a secret. I can at any rate. Let me see whether I cannot tell you why you have tried to mislead me."
Her ears were hot, and she glanced involuntarily towards the garden door. Had any one else than Lord Henry revealed a fraction of his ability to pierce her secret she would have fled.
"A good suggestion," he exclaimed, following the direction of her eyes. "Let's sit in the garden."
He opened the door, and she walked out in front of him,—stiff, proud, and erect. He noticed a shadow running back into the house, and presumed it was Mrs. Delarayne.
They reached the small marquee, two or three wicker chairs lay about the lawn outside it, and they sat down. Now for the first time he could form a just estimate of his companion's beauty, and he experienced some difficulty in removing his glance from her. The stay at Brineweald had tanned her face, and deepened the warm colour of her skin, and though the recent vigils had somewhat deadened the brilliance of her eyes, they still flashed with a dignity and independence that were a warning to any one who might have thoughts of perpetrating an indiscretion in her presence.
Lord Henry tugged at his mesh, and wondered whether he had better proceed. This girl's secret, wrapped as it was in her pride and, worse still, in her vanity, seemed a very sacred thing to penetrate. Never had he felt that divination could lie so close to desecration as when he watched this magnificent creature before him, making her last proud stand in front of the humiliating cause of her breakdown. His heart went out to her, however; he suddenly felt the impulse, not of the trained psychologist to cure a patient, but of a gallant knight to save a beautiful lady in distress. He was prepared to use every weapon in order to defeat the dragon, and as his strongest weapons seemed to be his deep knowledge of the human soul, and his long experience in curing it, he proceeded on his old lines. But how different he was, notwithstanding, from the Lord Henry of the Ashbury Sanatorium none knew better than himself. He could no longer be cool and collected. He must fight with the girl against the canker in her heart as if he himself also felt the pain of it. He must tear it out and save her peace of mind, like the therapeutist that he was; but he could not help also being the fellow-sufferer, so deeply did he feel that he wished to share her woe and her fears.
"Well," he said, "I was beginning to tell you why you wished to lead me astray."
"I didn't wish to lead you astray," she cried, almost desperate lest he should guess the truth.
"Very often," Lord Henry continued, "we can confide in a friend concerning a blow directed at our hearts, in fact that is actually one of the uses of friendship. But it is difficult sometimes to confess the pain of a blow levelled at our self-esteem, at our vanity."