Before any one of that strange company had found time to speak, Rainham had grasped the situation, knew himself at last and the others, and was prepared, scarcely counting the cost, with his splendid lie. He made a step forward, then stopped suddenly, as if he were bracing himself for a moral conflict. His face was very white and rigid, his mouth set firmly; and the other three watched him with a strange expectancy depicted on all their countenances, amidst the various emotions proper to each of them; for he alone had the air of being master of the situation. And his resolve had need to be very keen, for just then Eve did a thing which might have wrecked it. She rose and came straight towards him; her pretty, distressed face was raised to his, still, in spite of its womanly anguish, with some of the pleading of a frightened child, who runs instinctively in its extremity to the person whom it knows best; and she gave him her two little trembling hands, which he held for a moment silently.
"Philip," she said, in a low, constrained voice—"Philip, I have known you all my life—longer than anyone. You were always good to me. Tell me whether it's true or not what this woman has told me. Philip, I shall die if this be true!"
He bent his head for a moment. He had a wild longing to give up, simply to clasp her in his arms and console her with kisses and incoherent words of tenderness, as he had done years ago, when she was a very small child, and ran to him with her tear-stained cheeks, after a difficulty with her governess. But he only put her away from him very quietly and sadly.
"It is not true," he said quietly, "if it is anything against your husband."
The girl on the sofa, Kitty Crichton, rose; she made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote.
"I tell you it is not true. Lightmark," he added sternly, "there has been a mistake—you see that—for which I apologize. Wake up, for God's sake! Come and see after your wife; some slander has upset her. This woman is—mine; I will take her away."
The girl trembled violently; she appeared fascinated, terrified into a passive obedience by Rainham's imperious eyes, which burnt in his white face like the eyes of a dying man. She followed, half unconsciously, his beckoning hand. But Eve confronted her before she reached the door.
"Whom am I to believe?" she cried scornfully. "Why did you say it?
What was the good of it—a lie like that? It is a lie, I suppose?"
"Yes, yes!" said the girl hysterically, "it seems so. Oh, let me go, madam! I'm sorry I told you. I'll trouble nobody much longer. Call it a lie."
She threw out her hands helplessly; she would have fallen, but Rainham caught her wrist, drew her toward him, supporting her with an arm.