XXI.
It is doubtful if any guest save Mrs. Diggs and one other had seen Claire either receive, open, or read her note. The constant movements of servants hither and thither, and the little conversational cliques formed among the ladies at this central stage of the entertainment, would have made such an escape from general notice both natural and probable. But Mrs. Diggs, who had thus far kept a furtive though incessant watch upon Mrs. Lee, soon felt certain that her cousin had not merely seen what had passed; she was visibly affected by it as well; she could not help regarding Claire across the considerable space which intervened between them. Her expression was a most imprudent betrayal; it clearly told, by its acerbity and exultance, that she held the present occasion to be one of prodigious and triumphant import. No one except Mrs. Diggs was watching her, and she was unaware of even that sidelong but intent gaze. The natural mobility of her odd face, which repelled some and attracted others, needed at all times a certain check; but chagrins or satisfactions were both readily imprinted there. It corresponded to the pliability of her body; it would have been a face in which some clever actress might have found a fortune. She usually restrained it with discretion, but just now the force of a malign joy swept aside prudent control. Before Mrs. Diggs's exploring search of it ended, her last doubt had fled.
'I never saw her look more like the snake that she is,' Claire's friend had thought. 'The mischief—the deviltry, it may be—lies in that letter. Claire has grown as white as its paper; but nobody notices, thank Heaven! She won't faint—she isn't of the fainting sort.'
"Claire," she now said aloud, yet in tones which the most adroit of eavesdroppers could not have more than just vaguely overheard, "did you get any bad news a minute ago?"
Claire was no longer addressing the lady at her side. "Why do you ask?" she responded. "Do I look pale?"
"Not at all; not the least in the world; I've never seen you more composed," returned Mrs. Diggs, with enormous mendacity, hoping that her charitable lie would bear reassuring and tranquilizing results.
It did, as soon became apparent. Claire's condition was that in which we grasp at straws. Perhaps she grew several shades less pale on hearing that she was not so.
"I must leave the room," she said, pronouncing the words with the edges of her lips. "I must leave immediately."
"Are you unwell?"