She was white—perhaps with fury, perhaps with dread, perhaps with both. I said no more, but left her as soon as I saw that she did not intend to reply. Toward six o’clock that evening I met Walter in the main hall of the first bedroom floor. He was for hurrying by me, but I stopped him. I have an instinct which tells me unerringly when to ask a question.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He shifted from leg to leg; he, like most people, is never quite at ease in my presence; when he is trying to conceal some specific thing from me he becomes a victim of a sort of suppressed hysteria. “To the drawing-room,” he answered.
“Who’s there?” said I.
He shivered, then blurted it out: “James’s wife.”
“Why didn’t you tell me in the first place?”
He stammered: “I—wished to—to spare you—the——”
“Bah!” I interrupted. As if I could not read in his face that her coming had roused his fears of a reconciliation with James! “What are you going to say to her?”
“A message from mother,” he muttered.
“Have you seen your mother, or did you make up the message?”