As she drew away from him, she was trembling and her face was white; but there was a look he had never imagined in her eyes and on her lips. For one moment it seemed that she meant to speak; and then her lips closed. She turned away from him and walked out of the room without a word.
CHAPTER XII
Hardly conscious of her movements, Clodagh left the card-room and passed down the corridor.
Her only tangible sensations were anger and self-contempt. The thought that Serracauld, who had seemed less than nothing in the scheme of her life—Serracauld, with whom she had laughed and jested and flirted because he was a boy and of no account—should have treated her lightly; should have presumed to kiss her, to seize her violently in his arms, was something shameful and intolerable. The simplicity of her upbringing—the uncontaminated childhood that her country had given her—rose to confront her in this newest crisis. Vain, frivolous, foolish she might be, but beneath the vanity, the frivolity, the folly, she was—and always had been—good, in the primitive, fundamental sense of the word.
She hurried down the corridor, and down the staircase that she had ascended so short a time before; but, reaching the ground floor, she did not turn towards the ballroom, from which the sound of the violins still floated. Instinctively, she moved in the opposite direction, towards the quieter portion of the house in which stood the music-room.
The door of the room was closed when she reached it, and no sound came to her from within. For a space she stood hesitating outside; then the distant murmur of talk and laughter roused her to action. Her hesitancy fled before her distaste for companionship. She raised her hand and noiselessly opened the door.
To enter the music-room was to enter a region of romance. For, as the card-room upstairs suggested the world and the things of the world, this room seemed to embrace all the repose, all the dignity, all the peace that such places as Tuffnell gather unto themselves with the passage of time. It was a long, low-ceiled room with wainscoted walls and a polished oak floor; and the first object that met the visitor's eye, was an old harpsichord, mutely eloquent of bygone days; for, with rare good taste, Lady Diana had hidden her piano behind a tapestry screen, worked many centuries ago by another lady of the house. Even on this night of festivity, the place retained its peculiar quiet; only half a dozen candles burned in the sconces that hung upon the walls; and the scent of lavender and dried rose-leaves lingered upon the air.
It seemed what it was—a room in which, for numberless generations, women of refinement had made music, read poetry or sung songs, while they wove about them the indescribable atmosphere of home.
And into this room Clodagh stepped, her heart burning, her mind distressed, pained, and hurt.
For an instant she paused upon the threshold, overwhelmed by the contrast between the aloofness, the graceful repose of the place, and tumult of her own thoughts; then, yielding to the spirit of peace, she closed the door resolutely and went forward into the room.