For a moment the two stared curiously at each other.
"My interests?" muttered the viscount. "I don't understand you."
"I think you do," she said gravely. "But," she added, rising to her feet, "I am neglecting my visitors," and so saying she moved off in the direction of Idris and Beatrice, who were slowly pacing to and fro on one side of the lawn.
"Not even the coronet to console me now!" she murmured darkly. "A fitting punishment this for my long and guilty silence! Justice, justice, now thy scourge is coming upon me!"
Ivar did not follow his wife, but sat motionless for some moments, staring after her in blank dismay, and completely confounded by the startling hints that she had let fall.
"Idris Marville not dead," he muttered, removing with his handkerchief the cold moisture that glistened on his forehead. "That fellow he! Living here at Ormsby—in the same house with Beatrice! And Lorelie suspects! Suspects? She knows. By God! supposing she tells him! But, bah! she will not—she dare not—declare it; she stands to lose too much." He recalled her words to the effect that she would do nothing detrimental to his interests. The meaning of this assurance was obvious, and Ivar breathed more freely. "She'll keep the secret for her own sake. She'll not be so mad as to cut her own throat. In marrying her I've stopped her mouth. But if she had known as much a year ago as she knows to-day——!"
The smile had returned to Lorelie's lips by the time she reached Idris and Beatrice, and at her invitation they repaired to the drawing-room. Lord Walden, with a black feeling of hatred in his heart against both his wife and Idris, slowly followed without speaking, and flung himself on a distant ottoman as if desiring no companionship but his own.
Idris, thus ignored by the viscount, could but ignore him in turn. He had never beheld a more sullen and a more ungracious clown than Lorelie's husband, and he much regretted that he had not followed his first impulse to depart.
The drawing-room was a handsome apartment, containing many evidences of taste and wealth. Lorelie took a pride in pointing out her treasures.
"My father," she remarked, observing Beatrice's eyes set upon a portrait in oils representing a handsome man in the uniform of a French military officer.