She stopped suddenly. Vincent, too, stopped his violence and his curses. Eddie had come in.
Eddie’s peculiar power had never before been so unmistakably demonstrated. He had never before had such an opportunity for showing how much of a man he was. He was master of the situation, master of every one. He brushed aside the clamour, the furious arguments; he wished only for information, and he knew how to get it.
He addressed himself chiefly to the lawyer, with now and then a question to Polly. He listened carefully, and one could almost read in his face the functioning of his just and clear mind.
Angelica watched him through the keyhole. This wasn’t her Eddie, who stammered in her presence, who could be roused by a single look from her black eyes. Here was a man quite beyond her influence, immeasurably superior to her, a man undeniably fine.
She listened to him speaking. He addressed Vincent with a quiet, dispassionate sort of contempt; he told him that he would return to Polly what Vincent had stolen from her.
"And I will apologize to you, too," he said to Angelica, when he came out of the library, "for all this that you’ve had to go through here in my house. I think you’re quite right to leave. If you’ll go up-stairs now, I’ll talk the matter over with these gentlemen. You and I can discuss it later."
III
So it was over. The house was quiet again, and they were all shut in their several rooms. Angelica went to Polly’s door and knocked.
"It’s Angelica," she said. "Anything I can do for you?"
Polly’s voice came, after a long interval, faint and mournful: