Lydia started.
“What do you know about—what has Mr Brood said to you?” Her heart was cold with apprehension. “Why are you going away next week? What has happened?”
Brood's wife was regarding her with narrowing eyes.
“Are you attributing my motives to something that my husband has said to me? Am I expected to say that he has—what you call it—that he has put his foot down?”
“I am sorry you misunderstood my———”
“Oh, I see now. You think my husband suspects that Frederic is too deeply interested in his beautiful stepmother; is not that so? Poof! It has nothing to do with it.” Her eyes were sullen, full of resentment now. She was collecting herself.
The girl's eyes expressed the disdain that suddenly took the place of apprehension in her thoughts. A sharp retort leaped to her lips, but she suppressed it.
“Mr Brood does not like Frederic,” she said instead, and could have cut out her tongue the instant the words were uttered. Yvonne's eyes were glittering with a light that she had never seen in them before. Afterward she described it to herself as baleful.
“So! He has spoken ill—evil—of his son to you?” she said, almost in a monotone, “He has hated him for years—is not that so? I am not the original cause, aïe? It began long ago—long, long ago?”
“Oh, I beg of you, Mrs Brood———” began Lydia, shrinking back in dismay.