Stella went slowly into the house. Laurette met her in the hall, and led her into the breakfast-room, where Ted stood pallid and miserable, leaning against the mantelpiece. Laurette would have left them, but Stella called her back. There was something so cold and unmoved in her face and voice that Ted's heart sank, if possible, more than before; but his range of expression was limited.
'I know I have been a thundering jackass, Stella,' he said in a husky voice. 'I don't know how to ask you to forgive me.'
'Do you suppose I do not?' she said in a level voice.
'Don't say you forgive me when you look like that, Stella,' said Ted. 'I know you have a right to be angry.'
'But I am not, any more than if you had small-pox or typhoid—only if it were a merely physical malady you would soon recover. But what hope is there for a vice that wrecks the will so completely—a vice that overcomes a man till he lies sunk below the level of the brutes?'
The words were harsh, yet what added curiously to their force was the quiet, passionless tone in which they were uttered, and the involuntary shudder which shook Stella from head to foot as she spoke.
Ritchie flushed crimson, and for a little he did not speak.
'Do you mean,' he said at last very slowly, 'that I am not to be blamed for this? Because, if you do, you are very much mistaken. I am to blame most damnably, and I have been worse than an idiot; and I say this—if it ever happens again——'
'Why did you say I knew something of this?' said Stella, suddenly turning to Laurette without making any reply to her husband's affirmations.
'Well, I made sure you did by your manner, and that long talk we had before you went to Lull,' said Laurette composedly, meeting her brother's doubting scrutiny without flinching.