“Oh, I wish I could be there to see. He’ll sizzle and freeze at once, poor wretch. Well, let’s get them out. I’ll deposit Mrs. Montgomery in the Sèvres room, and tell her to look at the crockery and then go to bed.”
Lee had intended to return with Cecil to the tower and inform him that his bitter draught was to be sweetened for the present, but Pix must be dealt with summarily. If she did not get him out of the house before Lord Barnstaple lost his head there would be consequences which even her resolute temper, born of the exigencies of the hour, refused to contemplate.
The women, pleased with the suggestion of a romp on the moor, strolled, meanwhile, about the lake, looking rather less majestic than the swans, who occasionally stood on their heads as if disdainful of the admiration of mere mortals. When the men entered the drawing-room Lee asked them to go outside immediately, and Coralie placed her hand in Lord Barnstaple’s arm and marched him off.
Lee went down to the crypt with them, then slipped back into the shadows and returned to the drawing-room. Pix had greeted her suggestion with a sneer and a scowl, but it was evident that his plans had been frustrated, and that he was not a man of ready wit. He had sat himself doggedly in a chair, obviously to await the return of Lord Barnstaple and his guests. He sat there alone as Lee re-entered, looking smaller and commoner than usual in the great expanse of the ancient room, with its carven roof that had been blessed and cursed, and the priceless paintings on the panels about him. The Maundrells of Holbein, and Sir Joshua, and Sir Peter seemed to have raised their eyebrows with supercilious indignation. He was in accord with nothing but the electric lights.
As Lee entered he did not rise, but his scowl and his sneer deepened.
She walked directly up to him, and as he met her eyes he moved slightly. When Lee concentrated all the forces of a strong will in those expressive orbs, the weaker nature they bore upon was liable to an attack of tremulous self-consciousness. She knew the English character; its upper classes had the arrogance of the immortals; millions might bury but could never exterminate the servility of the lower. Let an aristocrat hold a man’s plebeianism hard against his nostrils and the poor wretch would grovel with the overpowering consciousness of it. Lee had determined that nothing short of insolent brutality would dispose of Mr. Pix. And for sheer insolence the true Californian transcends the earth.
“Why haven’t you gone?” she asked as if she were addressing a servant.
Pix too had his arrogance, the arrogance of riches. Although he turned pale, he replied doggedly:
“I’m not ready to go and I don’t go until I am. I don’t know what you mean.” He spoke grammatically, but his accent was as irritating as only the underbred accents of England can be.
“You know what I mean. You saw Lady Barnstaple this afternoon. She told you you must go. We don’t want you here.”