Howard and Marian shrunk together with their heads close in the effort to make sure of concealing their faces. She was suffering for herself, but more acutely for him. She knew, as if she were looking into his mind, his frightful humiliation. “Hereafter,” she thought, “whenever any one looks at him he will feel the thought behind the look.”
“How nearly did I come to him?” asked Saverhill.
Howard started and Marian caught the rail for support.
“A centre-shot,” replied Marshall, “if the people who know him and have talked to me about him tell the truth.”
“Oh, they’re ‘on to’ him, as you say, over there, are they?”
“No, not everybody. Only his friends and the few who are on the inside. There’s an ugly story going about privately as to how he got the ambassadorship. They say he was bought with it. But—he’s admired and envied even by a good many who know or suspect that he’s only an article of commerce. He’s got the cash and he’s got position; and his paper gives him tremendous power. Then too, as you say, all about him there are men like himself. The only punishment he’s likely to get is the penalty of having to live with himself.”
“A good, round price if French is not mistaken,” replied Saverhill.
The two men passed on. Howard and Marian looked guiltily about, then slipped away in the opposite direction. He helped her into the waiting hansom. As they were driven homeward she cast a stealthy side-glance at him.
“Yes,” she thought, “the portrait is a portrait of his face; and his face is a portrait of himself.”
He caught her glance in the little mirror in the side of the hansom—caught it and read it. And he began to hate her, this instrument to his punishment, this constant remembrancer of his downfall.