He has evidently been walking in a great hurry, but as he sees her he comes to a dead stop. All his worst fears are at once realized. The fact is that Crosby had missed Mrs. Prior at luncheon hour—a most unusual thing, by the way, for her to be absent, for she dearly loved a meal—and he had asked Miss Prior where she was. Miss Prior had said she did not know—hadn’t the faintest notion—perhaps gone for a prowl and forgotten her way home. Crosby somehow had felt that the fair Josephine was lying openly and freely, and had at once given a hint to Wyndham of Mrs. Prior’s conversation with him on the previous night, even suggesting that Mrs. Prior’s unusual absence from luncheon might have some connection with the Cottage. The result of all of which is that Mrs. Prior now finds herself looking into her nephew’s eyes and wondering rather vaguely what the next move is going to be.
His eyes are distinctly unpleasant. They had been anxious—horribly anxious—when first she saw them; but now they seem alive with active rage.
‘Where have you been?’ asks he immediately, his face set and white. Crosby, then, had been quite right in his suggestion.
‘I have been doing my duty,’ returns Mrs. Prior, who has pulled herself together. Her tone is stern and uncompromising.
‘You have been at the Cottage?’
‘You have guessed quite correctly.’
‘You have seen that poor girl, then, and——’
‘I have seen that most wretched girl, and told her my opinion of her.’
Wyndham makes a sharp ejaculation. ‘You spoke to her, insulted her, that poor child?’ He feels that reproach is no longer possible to him. What has she said? What, indeed, has she left unsaid? Great heavens, what monsters some women can be!
‘I explained to her her position. Not that she needed explanation, in spite of all her extremely clever efforts at an innocent bearing. I passed over that, however, and told her—hoping that perhaps she had some real feeling for you, though I understand that class of person never has any honest feeling—that beyond all doubt Lord Shangarry would disinherit you if he heard of your connection with her.’ She pauses here. This is her trump card, and she looks straight at Paul as she plays it.