With a swift movement Idina stood up. For once the statue-white face was flushed with a dull, disagreeable red which made her almost ugly. She looked tall and forbidding. "Write!" she repeated in a tone of suppressed fury, deep as a man's. "Do you think my letter would ever come to your eyes? She would destroy it before it could get to you—cunning cat that she is. You fool, it's her story I've been telling you—your wife's. She lived with that man—went to Russia with him——"
"Be silent!"
The two words cut short the torrent pouring from Idina's lips, as a block of ice might dam a rushing stream. But it was the look in Angelo's eyes, even more than his command, which shocked Idina into silence. She knew then that as much as he loved his wife, he hated her, Idina, and that nothing on earth could ever change his hate back into indifference. She knew that if she were a man he would by this time have killed her. The knowledge was anguish almost beyond bearing, yet the irrevocability of what she had done spurred her on after the first instant.
"I'll not be silent!" she panted. "For your father's sake. You've disgraced him in marrying this woman——"
"Go," Angelo said, "unless you wish to be turned out by my servants, you and your friend whom you brought here on false pretences."
"I didn't know how she was going to work this thing," Miss Jewett protested hastily. "If I had, I wouldn't——"
"It does not matter," Angelo said.
"But it does matter. Everything matters," Marie broke in, her quiet, alert, almost businesslike tone a surprise to her friend. "Don't send them away yet, Angelo—in justice to me. I know you don't believe things against me—of course not. Perhaps you would not believe, even if they could seem to prove anything, which they couldn't do. Things that aren't true can't be proved really, by the most cruel and malicious people. But maybe if you sent Miss Bland and her detective friend out of the house now, you might sometimes think of what you've heard, in spite of yourself—in the night, when dreadful thoughts seem almost true—and that would kill me. Besides, these women might spread tales. And that would distress your father. I must justify myself—not in your eyes; that isn't needed; but in theirs. I must do it—even at the awful expense of sacrificing another. Two names very much alike have made this mischief. Angelo, it was Mary Grant who was at that convent-school in Scotland, where Miss Jewett must have been spying for your cousin. I'd have saved poor Mary if I could. But you come first with me—first, before everything and every one. Ask her if what I say of her is not the truth."
Mary turned and looked at her friend. She was very still. Her heart, which had pounded in her bosom, moving the laces of her blouse, might almost have ceased beating. She appeared hardly to breathe. But through her large, soft eyes her soul seemed to pour itself out in a crystalline ray, piercing to the soul of Marie. And to the woman who had used the heart of her friend for a shield came a sudden and terrible thought. She remembered a passage in the Gospels where Judas led the Roman soldiers by night to the garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus, speaking no word, turned and looked at the betrayer. It was as if she saw a picture of this betrayal, beside the picture of herself leaning forward in the red hammock, with Angelo beside her and Mary's clear eyes questioning hers. She could have cried out aloud, and falling on her knees have confessed everything, begging God's forgiveness and Angelo's and Mary's. But instead, because she clung to this one desperate hope of keeping Angelo, she sat erect and firm, her ice-cold hands tightly grasping the edge of the hammock, one on either side of her body. If she had let go or tried to stand up, she knew that she must have collapsed. Grasping the edge of the hammock seemed to lend strength and power of endurance not only to her body but to her spirit as well. She gave back Mary's gaze steadily, and was hardly aware of turning her eyes for an instant from the still, pure face which had never looked so gentle or so sweet; yet she must have glanced away, for she warmed slowly with the consciousness that Idina Bland was confused, and that Miss Jewett too was under the influence of some new emotion which made her appear less hard, less dry, more like a human being. Hope ran through the veins of Marie in a vital tide. The desperate instinct of self-preservation had put the right weapon in her hand. She must go on and use it mercilessly, for she had touched the weak spot in her enemy's armour. Those two women did not know everything, after all. Idina had somehow overreached herself. It was certain that the allies were pausing to recover strength.
"Are you the woman to whom my cousin refers, Miss Grant?" Angelo asked; and his voice was the voice of the judge, not the protector.