At the sound of his name she had risen and come swiftly forward with outstretched hand. Her face was white and her eyes heavy with anxiety, but he felt then, as always, the calm nobility of her carriage. In the added fulness of her figure her beauty showed majestic.
He took her hand, holding it warmly in his own. "My dear Eugenia, if you are in trouble, remember that I am an ignoble edition of Juliet."
"Oh, I want you, not Juliet," she said. "I have sent for Dudley, but he has not come—I took the paper at the door by chance—and I find that Colonel Diggs has brought up that old dead lie about the governor. He dares to say that the people of Kingsborough believe it—the coward! They never believed it—it is false—as false as the lie itself. Oh, if I were a man I would kill him for it, but I am a woman, and you—"
"Kill him!" He laughed harshly. "We don't kill men who blacken our friend's honour; we wait till they attack our own lives—that's our code for you. If it were otherwise, I should act upon it with pleasure. But I came to see Webb about this thing. Where is he?"
"Oh, he is coming."
She sat down, keeping her excited eyes upon him. "It was Bernard, my own brother," she said passionately. "You know this, and the world must know it. The world shall know it if I have to utter it from the housetops. Oh, I have sinned enough in ignorance; now I will speak."
She bit her lips to keep back the quick tears, tapping her foot upon the floor. The red was in her cheeks and her eyes were as black as night. Her bosom quivered from the lash of her scorn.
"But you must keep out of it, my dear Eugie. Dudley and I will manage it. We'll see Diggs and get a retraction from him—that's sensible and simple. There's no scandal the better for dragging a woman into it."
She stopped him fiercely. "Then I give you fair warning. If you do not stop it, I shall. Ah, here's Dudley!"
She met him as he entered the room, clasping her hands upon his arm. "Dudley, have you seen it—this falsehood?"