“Some of these men are such idiots,” said Mrs. Barker, with a half-hysterical laugh. “They seem to think if a woman accepts the least courtesy from them they've a right to be familiar. But I fancy that fellow was a little astonished when I shut the door in his face.”
“I fancy he WAS,” returned Mrs. Horncastle dryly. “But I shouldn't call Mr. Van Loo an idiot. He has the reputation of being a cautious business man.”
Mrs. Barker bit her lip. Her companion had been recognized. She rose with a slight flirt of her skirt. “I suppose I must go and get a room; there was nobody in the office when I came. Everything is badly managed here since my father took away the best servants to Hymettus.” She moved with affected carelessness towards the door, when Mrs. Horncastle, without rising from her seat, said:—
“Why not stay here?”
Mrs. Barker brightened for a moment. “Oh,” she said, with polite deprecation, “I couldn't think of turning you out.”
“I don't intend you shall,” said Mrs. Horncastle. “We will stay here together until you go with me to Hymettus, or until Mr. Van Loo leaves the hotel. He will hardly attempt to come in here again if I remain.”
Mrs. Barker, with a half-laugh, sat down irresolutely. Mrs. Horncastle gazed at her curiously; she was evidently a novice in this sort of thing. But, strange to say,—and I leave the ethics of this for the sex to settle,—the fact did not soften Mrs. Horncastle's heart, nor in the least qualify her attitude towards the younger woman. After an awkward pause Mrs. Barker rose again. “Well, it's very good of you, and—and—-I'll just run out and wash my hands and get the dust off me, and come back.”
“No, Mrs. Barker,” said Mrs. Horncastle, rising and approaching her, “you will first wash your hands of this Mr. Van Loo, and get some of the dust of the rendezvous off you before you do anything else. You CAN do it by simply telling him, SHOULD YOU MEET HIM IN THE HALL, that I was sitting here when he came in, and heard EVERYTHING! Depend upon it, he won't trouble you again.”
But Mrs. Barker, though inexperienced in love, was a good fighter. The best of the sex are. She dropped into the rocking-chair, and began rocking backwards and forwards while still tugging at her gloves, and said, in a gradually warming voice, “I certainly shall not magnify Mr. Van Loo's silliness to that importance. And I have yet to learn what you mean by talking about a rendezvous! And I want to know,” she continued, suddenly stopping her rocking and tilting the rockers impertinently behind her, as, with her elbows squared on the chair arms, she tilted her own face defiantly up into Mrs. Horncastle's, “how a woman in your position—who doesn't live with her husband—dares to talk to ME!”
There was a lull before the storm. Mrs. Horncastle approached nearer, and, laying her hand on the back of the chair, leaned over her, and, with a white face and a metallic ring in her voice, said: “It is just because I am a woman IN MY POSITION that I do! It is because I don't live with my husband that I can tell you what it will be when you no longer live with yours—which will be the inevitable result of what you are now doing. It is because I WAS in this position that the very man who is pursuing you, because he thinks you are discontented with YOUR husband, once thought he could pursue me because I had left MINE. You are here with him alone, without the knowledge of your husband; call it folly, caprice, vanity, or what you like, it can have but one end—to put you in my place at last, to be considered the fair game afterwards for any man who may succeed him. You can test him and the truth of what I say by telling him now that I heard all.”