Mrs. Lyndesay seemed puzzled. She had been so sure of her instrument, and she wondered where her touch had failed.
“I thought not even you could have sunk to that!” she said at last. “Will you marry a second man who cares no more for you than for a pet horse or hound?”
Deb winced and looked away, and this time the other followed her glance as it went back to the place where her photograph had hung. “Christian took your picture,” she said casually. “I missed it one day just after he had been in. It was last year—months since—when he hardly knew and was scarcely interested in you, so you will not be able to flatter yourself that he was in love with you then! I suppose he took it because he was sorry for you—that is Christian all over. He always hated this room, and you were obviously out of place among these birds of a feather!”
She waved her hand scornfully at the cheap faces she hated, yet which she permitted no one else to handle, and sat back, satisfied, awaiting results. And she had every reason to be satisfied, for her last speech had clinched her argument in full, though after a fashion of which she did not dream.
Deb stood staring at the empty space, unconscious for the moment of the evil presences lying in wait, seeing only the kindness in Christian’s face as his hand went out to her, and the delicate chivalry that had hastened to shield a girl he scarcely knew and could hardly respect. He filled the room in spite of his brother—at that instant, Slinker was certainly and praisefully dead—and the dream on the hill caught her again in its rosy fingers. The inner meaning of her heart-searchings came home to her in a flash of revelation, and she understood why she had hesitated to wrong him and herself, as she had never hesitated with Stanley—why she must give him up now when he had grown to fill her whole world. For she knew at last that she loved him.
The room ceased to have any hold on her. The portrait’s eyes claimed her no longer. She turned back to Mrs. Lyndesay, bewildering her with a sudden smile.
“I will give him up!” she said definitely, in a tone that held neither resignation nor defeat, but something brighter and braver than had ever purified the atmosphere of Slinker’s lair. “I will give him back his promise—not because you have badgered me into submission, nor because I am afraid of gossip or the idle chatter of a few stable-boys, but because I know something now that I did not know before. I could hold him in spite of you, but I will not try.”
“I will not try!” she said a second time, and laid her sword at her enemy’s feet.
There was a moment’s silence, while the mistress of Crump leaned across the table, staring into the girl’s face; then pushed back her chair with an abrupt movement.
“Why, I believe you love him!” she exclaimed incredulously, and as Deb looked at her, saying nothing—“You poor fool!” she added harshly, and at that moment Christian knocked and entered.