“Yes, that is true,” said he. “Lady Ellington forbade me to write or attempt an interview with you, and I gathered that you acquiesced in this. I gathered, as was natural, that you were deeply offended——”
He stopped, for the light that shone in Madge’s face was that which was never yet on sea or land, but only on the face of a woman. And Lady Ellington’s presence at that moment was to them less than the fly that buzzed in the window-pane, or the swallows that swooped and circled outside in this world of blue and summer. The secret that was breaking out was to them a barrier impenetrable, that cut off the whole world, a ring of fire through which none might pass. Dimly came the sounds of the outer world to them there that which his eyes were learning, that which her eyes were teaching, absorbed them almost to the exclusion of everything else. Lady Ellington, perhaps, had some inkling of that; but she did not yet know how utterly she had lost, and she manned, so to speak, her second line of defence. The first had been lost; she was quick enough to see that at once.
“So since Madge was going to give you this sitting,” she said, “it was only reasonable that I should accompany her, to prevent—to prevent,” she repeated, with biting emphasis, “a recurrence of what happened when you, Mr. Dundas, last found yourself alone with my daughter.”
Then Madge lifted her head a little and smiled, but she still looked at Evelyn.
“Ask how she knew,” she said, “that I was going to sit to you. No, it does not matter. I am ready, Mr. Dundas, if you are.”
She turned and mounted the platform where she had stood before.
“The cloak, shall I put that on?” she asked. “It is by you there.”
Lady Ellington was at length beginning to feel and realise the sense of her own powerlessness; they did not either of them seem to attend to her remarks, which she still felt were extremely to the point.
“You have not done me the favour to answer me, Mr. Dundas,” she said.
Evelyn was already moving the easel into position, and he just raised his eyebrows as if some preposterous riddle had been asked him.