Again he looked at the portrait, and her agonized eyes followed the direction of his.
For a few seconds there was a tense silence. The deathly fragrance of the masses of flowers in the room seemed to increase till it was overpowering, suffocating. Then Grace spoke softly, brokenly, not to the stern old man, but to the woman in the picture.
“Oh, if only you could speak; if you could but tell us the whole truth! Do you know—I wonder, I think you may do—how I wept and prayed for you when I learned of your terrible fate, that overshadowed those sacred hours of our happiness; how my beloved grieved for you and your stricken husband, whom he so loved and honoured? If you do know, then, as a woman, you will know what we suffer, in our great love and all our sorrow, with the shadow of doom upon us—you will strive to touch your husband’s heart, to soften it towards us!”
“Enough!” Sir Robert’s voice broke in harshly. “It is useless for you to invoke the dead, useless to ask me to intercede for your husband. I have no power to save him, and if I had I would not exert it; the law must take its course!”
Austin stepped forward impetuously.
“Sir Robert,” he began indignantly, but Grace checked him with a gesture.
In some uncanny way she seemed suddenly to regain her composure, and rose to her feet, standing erect just as she had done in court when the judge pronounced Roger’s doom. Slowly her glance travelled from the portrait round the beautiful room, as if she was noting each detail, and the two men watched her in silence.
“The room with green hangings and many flowers,” she said softly; “the room where the truth will be made known—at the ninth hour.”
“Come away, Grace,” said Austin huskily, moving to her side and taking her arm. He feared her mind had given way at last under the long strain.
She looked at him with that faint, inscrutable Mona Lisa smile on her white face.