Harriet had a natural awe of Lady Wargrave, which she shared with all under that roof; for Lady Sarah she had the deep respect which she extended to every member of the august clan it had been her privilege to serve for so many years. In the devout eyes of Harriet Sanderson each unit of that clan was not as other men and women. In the matter of Bridport House and all that it stood for, she was more royalist than the king.
From the dark hour, a week ago now, in which the news had come by a side wind, that the fates by a stroke of perverse cruelty, as it seemed, had thrown Mary across the path of Mr. Dinneford, she had hardly known how to lay her head on her pillow. To her mind the whole thing was simply calamitous. It had thrown her into a state of profound unhappiness. She now came into the room looking worn and ill, yet fully prepared for short shift to be meted out to her by those whom she found assembled there.
The ladies looked for defiance, no doubt. And they may have looked for an undercurrent of malicious triumph. Yet if they expected either of these things their mistake was at once very clear. It was hard to find a trace of the successful intriguer in the haggard cheeks and somber eyes of the woman before them. But to minds such as theirs portents of this kind could not be expected to weigh in the scale against their preconceived ideas.
It was left to Lady Wargrave to fix the charge. And this she did with a blunt precision which was itself a form of insult. The icy tones were scrupulously polite, nothing was said which one in her position was not entitled to say in such circumstances, yet the whole effect was so deadly in its venom as to be absolutely pitiless.
At first Harriet was overwhelmed. The force of the attack was beyond anything she had looked for. Moreover, it seemed to fill the Duke, an unwilling auditor, with anger and pain. He moved uneasily in his chair, yet he was not able to check the cold torrent of quasi-insult by word of mouth, for none knew better than Lady Wargrave how to administer castigation without going outside the rules of the game.
Even when the shock of the first blows was past, Harriet could find no means of defending herself. She was a very proud woman. Her blamelessness in what she could only regard as a very odious matter was so clear to her own mind that it did not seem to call for re-statement. She, too, said nothing. But a hot flush came upon the thin cheek.
Lady Wargrave grew more and more incensed by a silence, the cause of which she completely mistook.
“You have been nearly thirty years here, Mrs. Sanderson, and you have been guilty of a wicked abuse of trust.”
The painful pause which followed this final blow was broken at last by the Duke.
“You must forgive me, Charlotte, if I say that the facts of the case as they have been presented, hardly justify such a statement.”