"God — help — us…" She touched her white face, her handsome face where you could see the faint wrinkles now. "This — this alters — this — that is…" Her gaze turned towards Betty Depping, who was looking blankly at Dr. Fell.
"Betty darling!" said Maw, with a brisk abrupt smile. "I see that I should not have brought you down here at all. You were upset enough to begin with. These trying events, these monstrous accusations… Child! Do as I tell you. Go upstairs this instant, and he down. Now, now; I won't hear a word! Lie down like a good child, and tell Patricia to put the ice bag on your head. I will stay here and thrash this matter out. There is a mistake somewhere — surely there is a mistake. You will need all your strength presently. Depend on it, I will do my best for you. Run along, now!"
She disengaged her arm from the other's shoulder. Betty Depping was looking at her steadily. Again Betty was sturdy and capable; with the cool cynical eyes and the strong chin. She smiled.
"Yes, it does, alter matters, doesn't it?" she asked softly. "I–I don't think I care to hear anything more."
She inclined her head to the group and walked to the door, but she turned there. She had become tense and fierce, with color in her cheeks: a fighter, and dangerous, and her eyes had a hot blue brilliance. Yet her lips hardly seemed to move.
The only one who matters in this affair," she said, still in a low voice, "is Morley. Understand that. What he thinks, and what he cares" — her breast rose and fell once, with a sort of shudder—"is what I think and car’. Remember that, please."
"Child!" said Maw, lifting her chin.
"Good night," said Betty Depping, and closed the door.
The warmth and strength of her personality was still in that room. Even the colonel's lady felt it. She tried to adjust herself to the new state of affairs; to stare down Dr. Fell and the bishop; to preserve a high-chinned dignity and yet keep an appropriate aloofness.
"Will you kindly," she said in a tense voice, "stop tapping that pencil on the table? It has been driving me insane… Thank you so much. Now that Miss Depping has gone, will you be so good as to substantiate these lurid statements of yours? They can be substantiated, I hope?"