She turned to him, and in the obscurity his face seemed strange to her. She could not construct the features, nor supply the well-known lines now lost in the shadow. She saw only the great forehead, faintly white, and the upper part of his cheeks; but his eyes were hidden in two deep cavities of blackness, and all expression was extinguished.
“There will always be these misunderstandings,” he told her, “so long as you are tied to this sort of social life.”
“I prefer it to the underworld,” she answered, and her heart beat, for she was launching her attack.
“What d’you mean by the ‘underworld’?” he asked.
“The world that Lizette belongs to,” she replied.
She had said it!—she had hurled her lightning, and now she waited for the roll of the thunder. But there was no cracking of the heavens: only silence; and, as she waited, she could feel the beating of her pulse in her throat.
At last he spoke, and his voice was quiet and clear.
“Please tell me exactly what Cousin Charles has said about Lizette.”
She turned quickly on him. “Why should you think it was Charles Barthampton who told me?”
“Because I was with Lizette the day I first met him,” he answered.