“Ah, Conte, you here! Mr Dale, pray forgive me for coming unannounced. I want to make a petition—to lay an appeal before you.”
She held out her hand with a most winning smile, and then turned and shook hands with the Conte.
“What he has been waiting for,” thought Dale—“her coming—she, his mistress, to be a witness of his own wife’s shame.”
There was an angry, determined look in his eyes. A minute before, a feeling of misery and despair troubled him. There was a sensation akin to pity in his breast for the man who was being basely deceived; but now rage took its place, compunction was gone, and he felt hard as steel, as he prepared himself for the fight, determined at all hazards to save Valentina from such a humiliation as this.
The thoughts flew like lightning through his brain as, in her most silky tones, Lady Grayson addressed him.
“May I lay my petition before you now, Mr Dale?”
“Oh, I will not be de trop,” cried the Conte. “I am going. My dear Mr Dale, you will think over that, and write to me, I am sure?”
“I assure you, sir,” began Dale; and then he bit his lip savagely, for in a playful, girlish way, Lady Grayson had stepped aside, ostensibly that the gentlemen might speak together; really to obtain a glimpse of the picture on the easel. She succeeded, and turned back directly.
“I beg pardon,” she cried. “Oh, do forgive me, Mr Dale; it was very rude.”
Their eyes met, and he saw a look of malicious triumph in hers, which told him that this woman had recognised the face upon the canvas, and that her suspicion of the Contessa coming to sit for him was confirmed.