“You are going away, Lyndhurst?” she asked.
He made a ghastly attempt to devise a reasonable answer, and thought he succeeded.
“Yes, I’m going—going to your cousin’s to shoot. I told you he had asked me. You objected to my going, but I’m going all the same. I should have left you a note. Back to-morrow night.”
Then she felt she knew all, as certainly as if he had told her.
“Since when has Cousin James been giving shooting parties on Sunday?” she asked. “Please don’t lie to me, Lyndhurst. It makes it much worse. You are not going to Cousin James, and—you are not going alone. Shall I tell you any more?”
She was not guessing: all the events of the last month, the Shakespeare ball, Harrogate, their own quarrel, and on the top this foolish lie about a shooting party made a series of data which proclaimed the conclusion. And the suddenness of the discovery, the magnitude of the issues involved, but served to steady her. There was an authentic valour in her nature; even as she had stood up to interrupt the political meeting, without so much as dreaming of shirking her part, so now her pause was not timorous, but rather the rallying of all her forces, that came eager and undismayed to her summons.
Apparently Lyndhurst did not want to be told any more: he did not, at any rate, ask for it. Just then Parker came in with the mended sponge. She gave it him, and he stood with sponge-bag in one hand, sponge in the other.
“Shall I bring up tea, ma’am?” she said to Mrs. Ames.
“Yes, take it to the drawing-room now. And send the cab away. The Major won’t want it.”
Lyndhurst crammed the sponge into its bag.