“No, no,” she murmured. “It cannot be.”
She advanced into the great dim place excitedly, with the many grim-looking plaster figures and busts seeming to watch her furtively out of the gloom; and as she looked quickly from side to side, she fancied that the faces were menacing and full of reproach, as if telling her that she had sent her lover to his death.
She had nearly crossed the room when she started and shrank back in horror, for one of the rugs had been kicked slightly aside, and there was a wet dark mark upon the boards which she knew at a glance to be blood—his blood, for it was here he had fallen when her husband struck him down.
With the faintest of hopes amid her despair that she might still be in time, she went on to the inner door, seized the handle, and was pressing it, but it was twisted from her fingers, the door opened, and she was about to fling herself into Armstrong’s arms, but only shrank back with a look of jealous rage and despair.
For Cornel stood framed in the opening and closed the door, then looked her firmly and defiantly in the face.
Neither spoke for a full minute, and as Valentina gazed in the blanched countenance before her, she read here so stony and despairing a look, that she shrank away in horror, certain that either there was some terrible revelation awaiting her beyond the door which had been so carefully closed, or else that Cornel’s eyes were confirming her worst dread, and that Armstrong had gone forth to meet his death.
It was some moments before the Contessa could command herself sufficiently to speak aloud. She wished to get from Cornel’s lips the truth, and to show her how, possessed as she was of Armstrong’s love, she could treat her with calm, contemptuous tolerance, as one almost beneath her notice. But the stern disdain in those large flashing eyes mastered her and kept her silent. There was a magnetism in their glance, and she felt that if she spoke it would be in a broken feeble manner, which would lower her in her rival’s eyes.
She fought against it, struggled for a long time vainly, and moment by moment felt how strong in her innocence and truth her rival stood before her. It was not until she had lashed herself into a state of fury that she could force herself to speak.
“Mr Dale—where is he?” she cried at last imperiously.
“How dare you come and ask?” said Cornel fiercely, her whole manner changed.