“Orders are not necessary,” Betty replied. “The day is past when one rushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong medicine when one's friends were ill. If one is not a properly-trained nurse, it is wiser not to risk being very much in the way.”
He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady Anstruthers sat apart, appearing to read.
“Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately in love cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes.”
He was standing on the hearth. Betty swung herself lightly round, facing him squarely. Her full look was splendid.
“If it is there—let it stay,” she said. “I would not keep it out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I would—if it is there. If it is—let it stay.”
The daring, throbbing, human truth of her made his brain whirl. To a man young and clean and fit to count as in the lists, to have heard her say the thing of a rival would have been hard enough, but base, degenerate, and of the world behind her day, to hear it while frenzied for her, was intolerable. And it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for. Whether melodrama is out of date or not there are, occasionally, some fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day.
“You think you will reach him,” he persisted. “You think you will help him in some way. You will not let the thing alone.”
“Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever I take the liberty of doing will encroach on no right of yours,” she said.
But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face reflecting itself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were drawn together.
She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face, drew the black brows closer, confronting a complicating truth.