“I can’t prevent you from doing it, but I can advise you not to—for Ivor’s sake,” she answered.
“For his sake?”
“Yes, and for your own, too, if you care for his opinion of you at all. For his sake, because neither of us knows when he came out of Maxine de Renzie’s house. You would go away, though I wanted to stay and watch. He may not have been there more than five minutes for all we can tell to the contrary, in which case he would still have had time to go straight off to the Rue de la Fille Sauvage and kill that man, in accordance with the doctors’ statements about the death. For your sake, because if he knows that you tracked him to Maxine de Renzie’s house, he won’t respect you very much; and because he would probably be furious with you, unable to forgive you as long as he lived, for injuring the reputation of the woman he’s risked so much to save. He’d believe you did it out of spiteful jealousy against her.”
I grew cold all over, and trembled so that I could hardly speak.
“Ivor would know that I’m incapable of such baseness.”
“I’m not sure he’d hold you above it. ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’—and he has scorned you—for an actress.”
It was as if she had struck me in the face: and I could feel the blood rush up to my cheeks. They burned so hotly that the tears were forced to my eyes.
“You see I’m right, don’t you?” Lisa asked.
“You may be right in thinking I could do him no good in that way—and that he wouldn’t wish it, even if I could. But not about the rest,” I said. “We won’t talk of it any more. I can’t stand it. Please go back to your room now, Lisa, I want to be alone.”
“Very well,” she snapped, “you called me in. I didn’t ask to come.”