"There is certainly some one at the door," Isobel remarked.
Mabane paused in his work to shout fiercely, "Come in!" I too looked up from my writing. A woman was ushered into the room—a woman dressed in fashionable mourning, of medium height, and with a wealth of fair, fluffy hair, which seemed to mock the restraining black bands. Mrs. Burdett, visibly impressed, lingered in the background.
The woman paused and looked around. She looked at me, and the pen slipped from my nerveless fingers. I rose to my feet.
"Eil—Lady Delahaye!" I exclaimed.
She inclined her head. Her demeanour was cold, almost belligerent.
"I am glad to find you here, Arnold Greatson," she said. "You are a friend, I believe, of the man who murdered my husband?"
"You have been misinformed, Lady Delahaye," I answered quietly. "I was not even an acquaintance of his. We met that day for the first time."
By the faintest possible curl of the lips she expressed her contemptuous disbelief.
"Ah!" she said. "I remember your story at the inquest. You will forgive me if, in company, I believe, with the majority who heard it, I find it a trifle improbable."
I looked at her gravely. This was the woman with whom I had once believed myself in love, the woman who had jilted me to marry a man of whom even his friends found it hard to speak well.