Rhoda, who had fled upstairs in an agony of apprehension when Sir Robert came into the drawing-room and asked her to retire, sprang to her feet when she heard Lady Sarah’s impatient and haughty voice asking for admittance.
The wilful beauty rushed into the room like a whirlwind, a habit of hers when she was excited, and standing in the middle of the floor, gazed for a few moments defiantly at Rhoda, who had risen to receive her visitor.
Rhoda saw at once that a crisis had been reached in the domestic history of the ill-matched pair. Lady Sarah’s face was flushed, her eyes were red, her hair was disordered. Her gown of clinging rose-coloured satin was crumbled and soiled, and in every feature of her face, in every fold of her dress were signs of the disturbance of the past half-hour.
“I hope you are satisfied now, Miss Pembury, with the result of your well-meant advice to my husband, about his treatment of me!” she cried in a voice shrill with emotion, as she played nervously with her rings, and flashed indignant glances into Rhoda’s frank face. “You’ve roused suspicions in him which he ought to be ashamed of. He has made an awful scene, first with Jack and then with me, and the end will be the break up of the household.”
“What scene?” asked Rhoda hoarsely.
“Sir Robert professes to have found out that the picture was stolen by—by Jack, and so I had to say that I was the culprit. Now he has given us till to-morrow, when, I suppose, I shall have to go back to my parents, and poor Jack will be driven away too, of course.”
Rhoda was desperate, so she refused to be apologetic, or even sympathetic.
“Well, he couldn’t do better than that, at least, Lady Sarah, and you know that as well as I do.”
To her intense surprise, Lady Sarah took this boldly expressed opinion much better than she had expected. Staring intently into Rhoda’s face, she asked in a low voice:
“Do you really mean that, that you think he ought to be sent away? Tell me why. Tell me why.”