He saw she was shaking with suspense, and he pushed her gently into a chair.
“You'd better sit down a minute. You're about all in,” he said.
She might have been a woman with an ague as she caught his arm, shaking it because her hands themselves so shook.
“Is it true?” was her low cry. “Is he alive—is he alive?”
“Yes, he's alive.” And as he answered he drew close and so placed himself before her that he shielded her from the others in the room. He seemed to manage to shut them out, so that when she dropped her face on her arms against the chair-back her shuddering, silent sobbing was hidden decently. It was not only his body which did it, but some protecting power which was almost physically visible. She felt it spread before her.
“Yes, he's alive,” he said, “and he's all right—though it's been a long time coming, by gee!”
“He's alive.” They all heard it. For a man of Palliser's make to stand silent in the midst of mysterious slowly accumulating convictions that some one—perilously of his own rarely inept type—was on the verge of feeling appallingly like a fool—was momentarily unendurable. And nothing had been explained, after all.
“Is this what you call `bluff' in New York?” he demanded. “You've got a lot to explain. You admit that Jem Temple Barholm is alive?” and realized his asinine error before the words were fully spoken.
The realization was the result of the square-shouldered swing with which T. Tembarom turned round, and the expression of his eyes as they ran over him.
“Admit!” he said. “Admit hell! He's up-stairs,” with a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the ceiling.