Mr. Faradeane smiled.
“There are hundreds of people who could do it better, Lord Carfield.”
“I dare say,” said his lordship, “but I have never heard them. It made me shudder; but that is the effect you wanted to produce, no doubt. What amazes me, though, is how a man who hasn’t committed a murder—I don’t suppose that you have, Mr. Faradeane?” Faradeane smiled strangely. “What astonishes me is how a man who hasn’t slain a fellow creature could portray the feelings of the criminal so closely as you have done.”
“It is all trickery, Lord Carfield,” said Faradeane.
“Oh, of course,” said Bartley Bradstone, who was standing near, and listening with a moody bitterness. He had been watching Olivia during the whole of the recital, and had remarked, with furious jealousy, the effect produced on her. “It’s just a knack,” he said.
Lord Carfield turned to him with that slow, calm regard which always drove Bartley Bradstone half mad.
“Mr. Bradstone is quite right,” said Faradeane, and the pleasant assent chafed Bradstone still more than Lord Carfield’s cold glance.
“We’d better be going, hadn’t we?” he said, and almost pushing past Bertie, he offered Olivia his arm.
As she put her hand upon it, he felt that she was trembling, and looked at her with an ugly red glowing in his face.
“This confounded business has frightened you!” he said, almost loud enough for Faradeane to hear. “In my opinion, that kind of thing isn’t fit for a mixed audience.”