“Come, by all means.”
“Well—so-long,” he said diffidently. “So-long, Lyddy.”
“So-long,” she repeated, dropping into his manner of speech without thinking. There was a smothering sensation in her breast.
He looked back as he strode off in the direction from which they had come. She was at the top of the steps, her finger on the electric button. He wondered why her face was so white. He had always thought of it as being full of colour, rich, soft, and warm.
Inside the door Lydia experienced a strange sinking of the heart. Her limbs seemed curiously weak, and she was conscious of a feeling of utter loneliness, such as she had never known before. She looked about her in wonder, as if seeking an explanation for the extraordinary but fleeting impression that she was in a strange house. Never was she to find an interpretation of the queer fantasy that came and went almost in the span of a single breath.
“Is Mr Brood at———” she began nervously.
A voice at the top of the stairway interrupted the question she was putting to the footman.
“Is it you, Lydia? Come up to my room.”
The girl looked up and saw Mrs Brood leaning over the banister-rail. She was holding her pink dressing-gown closely about her throat, as if it had been hastily thrown about her shoulders. One bare arm was visible—completely so.
“I came to see Mr Brood. Is he———”