His voice failed him, and with parted lips and dilated eyes she gazed at him in equal amazement, too, but she was the first to speak.
'Shafto,' she exclaimed, 'you here—you?'
'Yes,' he snapped; 'what is there strange in that? This is my grandfather's house.'
'Your grandfather's house?' she repeated, and then the details of the situation came partly before her. She lifted up her eyes, wet with tears like dewy violets, for his voice, if hard and harsh, was associated with her home and Revelstoke, but she shrank from him, and her lips grew white on finding herself so suddenly face to face with one whom she felt intuitively was a kind of evil genius in her life!
Dulcie just then seemed a delightful object to the eye. That pure waxen skin, which always accompanies red-golden hair, was set off to the utmost advantage by the dead black of her deep mourning, and her plump white arms and slender hands were coquettishly set off by long black lace gloves, for Dulcie was dressed for dinner, and her soft white neck shone like satin in contrast to a single row of jet beads, her only other ornament being Florian's locket, on which the startled eyes of Shafto instantly fell.
Dulcie saw this, and instinctively she placed her hand—a slim and ringless little white hand—upon it, as if to protect it, and gather strength from its touch; but her bosom now heaved at the sight of Shafto, and fear and indignation grew there together, for she was losing her habitual sense of self-control.
'You—here?' he said again inquiringly.
'Yes,' she replied in a broken voice, 'and I wonder if I am the same girl I was a year ago, when poor papa was well and living, and I had dear Florian—to love me!'
'Dulcie here—d—nation!' thought Shafto: 'first old Madelon Galbraith and now Dulcie; by Jove the plot is thickening—the links may be closing!'
He had an awful fear and presentiment of discovery; thus perspiration stood like bead-drops on his brow; yet the mystery of her presence was very simple.