For half a minute silence followed, then Golden Priest Alphonso broke the silent spell.
“What right had you going there? You! A woman.”
“I—I was very much in earnest.”
“Then,” said he harshly and pitilessly, “you are to blame for all the events of the past three years.” Then his voice altered, and he said: “Truth is pleasant. It is a relief to find the late High Priest was better than one thought. But you, what excuse is there for you, to keep silence so long, and let a man go to his grave misunderstood? Fear, I presume, of being found out.”
“I knew nothing,” said Rosalie, in a kind of self-defence, for the expression in his eyes under the hypocritical sternness was very sinister. And then someone hissed at the far end of the room, and then someone else. Truly the Serpent was alive, and no golden image either.
But hissing was contrary to the dictates of good manners in such an assembly, and the chairman called to order. Rosalie sat down trembling, all colour gone from her face, though she had sufficient strength of will to keep her from giving any further signs of the ordeal she had passed through. Her eyes travelled magnetically from the face of the Golden Priest to that of Mr. Barringcourt.
He was leaning forward, his elbow on the table, looking at her. In his eyes shone the old mocking, laughing light, that said in so many silent words, “Now you’ve put your foot into it.” They showed no sympathy.
Then a man, seizing the opportunity, got up and spoke in favour of Phillipus; another, then another. The tide seemed turning—was turning. Rosalie sat as an icicle. Every now and again she felt the sinister eyes from below, the laughing ones from above, fixed on her.
Who would have thought the popularity of a man hung on such a little thing as a handkerchief?
Then at last Mr. Barringcourt got up. In the midst of passion and eloquence, he was passionless. In spite of his height, in spite of his deep, unfathomable eyes, in spite of his firm mouth and certain lines upon his face, he seemed to be by far the youngest who had spoken, in manner, in voice, in a certain confident easiness. People settled in their places, smiled when he smiled, and became suddenly more good-natured, for at times he had a very bewitching smile.