There was a lapse of some kind that she could neither account for nor describe even to herself. She tried to put it into seconds and minutes, and then realised that it was not a matter to be reckoned as time. Yet there had been a distinct, unmistakable gap in her existence. Something had stopped—she knew not for how long—and then she had found herself breathing, thinking once more. In spite of the conviction that she had passed through a period of utter oblivion, she could account for every second of time with an absolute clearness of memory.
There was not an instant, nor a sensation, nor an impulse that was not fully recorded in her alert brain. She remembered everything; she could have described every emotion; and yet she felt that there had been a period of complete absence, as real as it was improbable.
She felt now as she always felt after sipping champagne—in a warm glow of intoxication. She was drunk with the scent that filled her nostrils, the scent that lay on her lips, that lived and breathed with her. Her heart was throbbing rapidly, as if earnestly seeking to regain the beats that it had lost.
Suddenly there came to her an impulse to go back and lay bare before Yvonne all of the wretched story that had fallen from the lips of James Brood the night before. She conceived the strange notion that Yvonne alone could avert the disaster, that she could be depended upon to save Frederic from the blow that seemed so sure to fall. She even went so far as to turn toward the door and to take a step in its direction.
Then came the revolt against the impulse. Was it fair to Frederic? Had she the right to reveal this ugly thing to one whose sympathies might, after all, be opposed to the wife who had preceded her in James Brood's affections—the wife who had been first in his heart, and whose memory, for all she knew, might still be a worthy adversary even in this day of apparent supremacy?
What right had she to conclude that this woman would take up the cause of Frederic's mother and jeopardise her own position by seeking to put her husband in the wrong in that unhappy affair of long ago? Would Yvonne do this for Frederic? Would she do all this for Frederic's mother?
Lydia turned away and went slowly toward the stairs, despising herself for the thought. The black velvet coat that formed a part of her trig suit hung limply in her hand, dragging along the floor as she moved with hesitating steps in the direction of James Brood's study. A sickening estimate of her own strength of purpose confronted her. She was suddenly afraid of the man who had always been her friend. Somehow she felt that he would turn upon and rend her, this man who had always been gentle and considerate—and who had killed things!
She found herself at last standing stock-still at the bottom of the steps, looking upward, trying to concentrate all of her determination on what now appeared to her to be an undertaking of the utmost daring, as one who risks everything in an encounter in the dark.
Ranjab appeared at the head of the stairs. She waited for his signal to ascend, somehow feeling that Brood had sent him forth to summon her. Her hand sought the stair-rail and gripped it tightly. Her lips parted in a stiff smile. Now she knew that she was turning coward, that she longed to put off the meeting until to-morrow—to-morrow!
The Hindu came down the stairs, quickly, noiselessly.