He moved across the room and, approaching his sister, shook her roughly by the arm. Some psychic change in the atmosphere about them seemed to have completely altered their relations.
“Confess—confess—you girl!” he muttered harshly. “Confess now—when you go rushing off like that into the park it isn’t to see that foreign fellow at all? It isn’t even to lie, as I know you love to do, touching the stalks of the poison funguses with the tip of your tongue under the oak trunks? It’s to escape from hearing her, that’s what it is! Confess now. It’s to escape from hearing her!”
He suddenly relaxed his grasp and stood erect, listening intently. The sweet heavy scent of magnolia petals floated in through the window and somewhere—far off among the trees—a screech-owl uttered a broken wail, followed by the flapping of wings. The clock in the hall outside began striking the hour. Before each stroke a ponderous metallic vibration trembled through the silent house.
“It’s only ten now,” he said. “The clock in here is fast.”
As he spoke there was a loud ring at the entrance door. The brother and sister stared blankly at one another and then Philippa gave a low unnatural laugh. “We might be criminals,” she whispered. They instinctively assumed more easy and less dramatic positions and waited in silence, while from the distant servants’ quarters some one came to answer the summons. They heard the door opened and the sound of suppressed voices in the hall. There was a moment’s pause, during which Philippa looked mockingly and enquiringly at Brand.
“It’s our dear priest,” she whispered, “and some one else, too.”
“Surely the fool’s not going to try—” began Brand.
“Mr. Traherne and Dr. Raughty!” announced the servant, opening the library door and holding it open while the visitors entered.
The clergyman advanced first. He shook hands with Brand and bowed with old-fashioned courtesy to Philippa. Dr. Raughty, following him, shook hands with Philippa and nodded nervously at her brother. The two men sank into the seats offered them and accepted an invitation to smoke. Brand moved to a side table and mixed for them, with an air of resigned politeness, cool and appropriate drinks. He drank nothing himself, however, but his sister, with a mocking apology to Mr. Traherne, lit herself a cigarette.
“How’s the rat?” she began, throwing a teasing and provocative smile upon the priest’s perturbed countenance.