"Mr. Clinton," she said, "I have never had the pleasure of meeting you, but I expect you know who I am. I have come down from London on purpose to have a little talk with you."
She had altered in no way that he could have described. She was fashionably dressed, in a manner suitable for the country, her wonderful hair had not lost its lustre, her face was still the beautiful mask of whatever lurked in secret behind it. Yet she seemed to him a thing of horror, degraded and stained for all the world to see. And even the world might have been aware of some subtle change. Whether it was that her neat boots were slightly filmed with dust, or that her clothes, smart as they were, were not of the very latest; or that it was no outward sign, but the consciousness of disgrace affecting her bearing, however she might try to conceal it—whatever it was, it was there. This was a woman who had come down very low, knew that the world was against her, and would fight the world with no shame for what it could still withhold from her.
He stared at her open-mouthed, unable for the moment either to speak or think.
She laughed at him elaborately. "You don't seem very pleased to see me," she said. "May we go into the house and sit down? I have walked from the station, and am rather tired."
"No," he said quickly, reacting to his immediate impulse. "You will not enter my house."
She looked at him with careful insolence. "Shall we go into the churchyard?" she said, "and talk over Susan Clinton's grave?"
The infamous taunt brought him to himself. "Come this way," he said, and turned his back on her to stride off along a path between the shrubs.
She followed him for a few steps, and then, feeling probably that this rapid progress in his wake did not accord with her dignity, stopped and said, "Where are you taking me to, please? I haven't come here to look at your garden."
He turned sharply and faced her. "I am taking you to where we can be neither seen nor heard," he said, and waited for her to speak.
"Very well," she said. "That will suit me very well—for a first conversation—as long as it is not too far, and I am not expected to race there."