She recalled Thurston's words to her at the opera on the previous night. Surely there was some grave discrepancy between these and the acts of his sister. As for the headache, that was of course transparent sham. If this lofty lady had wanted to deceive, she might have done so more plausibly. But perhaps she did not care whether or no her excuse looked genuine. Rats leave a falling house. That was all the letter meant. Claire could have thrown it down upon the floor and stamped on it. In reality, she tossed it with seeming unconcern into the fire, and gave a quiet order to Marie which she wished taken directly to the butler, regarding the reduced number of her coming guests.
When Marie reëntered the apartment, she bore a card. It was the card of Thurston. On it were written in pencil these words: "I beg that you will see me for a few moments, if you can possibly manage."
She at once went down and received him. He looked fixedly into her face for a slight while, after they had seated themselves. He knew all that had happened, and he understood just how savage and calamitous must seem to her the blows from which she was now suffering. He read excitement and even despair in every line of her features, though he clearly perceived that both were held under a determined repression.
'She means not to let herself go one inch,' he decided. 'If she did, she would break down altogether. She has wound herself up to a certain pitch. She will keep just this way for hours yet. She will keep so—if nothing strange and unforeseen should happen.'
A deep and vital pity pierced him while he watched her. He loved her, and his love made him unreasonably lenient. A sacred sadness invested her, for his eyes, in this the hour of her misfortune and overthrow. He forgot how blameworthy she had been, and could remember only that destiny would soon hurl in the dust the crown that she had worn with so much grace and grandeur.
"Did you come to speak of my—of our trouble?" she said, her lip quivering for an instant and no more.
"No," he replied. "But since you speak of it, is all chance of recovery gone? May not matters right themselves somehow?"
She shook her head in quick negative. "I think not. He has lost everything—or nearly that." She broke into a smile, which had for her companion only the brightness one might see in tears. "I suppose it seems to you like a punishment—a retribution." Her gaze dwelt on him with a mournful kind of pleasantry. It was like the spirit of Comedy slipping her gay mask a little down and showing beneath it a glimpse of pallor and fatigue.
"But do not let us talk of that. You wanted to talk of something else. What was it? your sister's refusal, at the eleventh hour, to come to my lunch?"
"Has she refused?"