She drew back, and stood there erect and proud, with defiance flashing through her thick veil as the Conte entered, quickly followed by Lady Grayson. A heavy, gold-topped, ebony stick was in his hand, his lips were compressed, and it was plain to see in his pallid face and dilated nostrils that he was struggling with suppressed passion.
He was making straight for Armstrong when his eyes fell upon Cornel, who stood now white and calm, as if ready to interpose. Then he looked sharply at the cloaked and veiled figure just on the artist’s right.
He stopped in astonishment, confused, and as if the supply of vital force which had urged him on had suddenly been checked.
It was Armstrong’s opportunity. A few carelessly spoken, contemptuous utterances as to the meaning of this intrusion and the like would have sufficed to send the Conte back, mortified, and in utter ignorance, to vent his rage upon Lady Grayson, who, in her malignant desire to cast down her dearest confidante and friend from her throne, had brought him on there to be a witness of one of his wife’s secret meetings with her lover, such as she had vowed to him were taking place. But Armstrong, in utter scorn of all subterfuge, stood there manly and ready to meet the man in full defiance, come what might.
A terrible silence followed, of moments that felt to all like hours, while each waited for others to speak.
It was Cornel’s opportunity too, to bring her rival to her knees and sweep her for ever from her path, and Valentina felt it as she stood there with her teeth clenched and face convulsed behind the thick veil. For, after all, in spite of her bravery and readiness to defy the man whose name she bore, she was a woman still, and instinctively shrank from the dénouement, knowing as she did that a terrible scene must follow; and another later, in spite of English laws, for it was an Italian pitted against a man who would dare all.
But Cornel remained silent, and Lady Grayson scanned all in turn, ending by fixing her eyes upon the great canvas whose back was toward them where they stood.
“I—I beg pardon—some mistake,” stammered the Conte. “I did not know that—Curse you,” he whispered to Lady Grayson, and relapsing in his excitement into broken English, “You make me with you silly cock-bull tale a fool.”
Armstrong still made no movement, said no word, but Lady Grayson read him as if he were an open page laid before her, and her eyes twinkled and flashed.
The keen-witted American girl saw it too, and with all her gentleness and love, she possessed the quick perception and readiness of a people born in a clearer air and warmer clime. In those moments, with all her hatred and scorn for the woman who was the blight upon her life, she shrank in all the tenderness of her nature from seeing her humbled to the very dust. More; she grasped the horror of the situation; how that, beneath the weak flippancy of the man of fashion, there smouldered the hot passions of his countrymen—passions which, once roused, are as hot and destructive as the lava of their great volcano. She saw in imagination, blows, and Armstrong injuring or injured, either being too horrible to be borne. Lastly, she grasped Lady Grayson’s plan.