REVELATION
Miles Ingestre met his sister in the hall, and without a word drew her into the sitting-room and closed the door. His action had been so sudden, his grip upon her arm so fierce, that she stood looking at him, too startled to protest. In the half-darkness she could only see that he was very pale and that he vainly strove to control the nervous twitching of his lips.
"What is it?" she asked. "Has anything happened?"
"Some one has come," he said breathlessly.
She did not answer. A black veil had fallen before her eyes, and an emotion to which she could give no name, but which was so powerful that she stretched out a groping hand for support, clutched at her throat and stifled her. She did not ask who had come. She knew by the very change in herself, by the violent shock which seemed to waken her stunned senses to a renewed and terrible capacity for suffering.
"Wolff—my husband!" she stammered. "Where is he?"
"It is not Wolff," Miles retorted rapidly. "It is that Hildegarde von Arnim. She arrived half an hour ago, and says she must see you at once. She won't speak to either of us."
"Hildegarde? You must be dreaming! She is too ill to move."
"She looks ill, but she can move all right. At any rate, she seems to have come a long way to find you."
"I must go to her," Nora said dully. "Where is she? Why don't you let me pass?"