Hammersley stood as she had left him for a moment and only raised his head when the parlor maid came in again and replaced the brasses on Lady Heathcote’s desk. In his eyes there came a keen look and he took a step forward.
“Do you always clean Lady Heathcote’s brasses on Friday?” he asked the maid.
She turned around with a startled air.
“Oh, yes, sir,” she replied demurely. “Friday, sir.”
“Oh!” said Hammersley. “Thanks.”
She stood a moment as if awaiting further questions and then went out.
Hammersley followed her with his gaze and then with a last look around the room went into the hall, put on his fur coat and cap and quickly made his way toward the garage.
Upstairs Doris paced her room in an agony of rage and humiliation. She had meant to give him his dismissal kindly, but it was his abjectness that had made her scornful—abjectness worn as she now knew with an object that was indifferent to scorn. It was only with the purpose of getting the papers from her that he had kept her there, and the contempt that she had shown for him seemed but a piteous thing beside the enormity of his brutality. He had not cared what she thought of him. He had not cared. He had said so himself. Their love was a trifle beside the greater matter that concerned him.
He had led her on under the guise of a shame he did not feel, from one revelation to another, playing upon her emotions, upon things, which should have been sacred even to him in such an hour until with infinite cunning he had made her bring out the papers—and then——