Nelson followed her and shut the door of the sitting-room. He looked ill and pale in his fine coat with its stars; even less fit to face the ordeal than she. But he moved straight up to the attack and laid his ship alongside the enemy, as he always did at sea. She sat down, quite unable to stand.
“I wish to know why you publicly insulted Lady Hamilton? Why, when she fainted, did you not show her the common humanity of help as one woman to another? Why did you turn your back on her and walk out of the box?”
Her teeth were chattering with terror. She could hardly control her voice. There could be only one thing more dreadful than this scene—to endure as she had been enduring. But she got some words out at last.
“If you ask me that question I must answer. But you had better not.”
His tone was like tempered steel: “I ask it.”
She raised herself in her chair, supporting her two hands on the arms, and looked into his eyes.
“It is terrible to me to say it, but I cannot screen your mistress and the mother to be of your child.”
There was an awful silence. His face was livid. Every particle of colour had fallen away even from his lips. So they faced each other, the ruins of their life between them. For a minute or more neither spoke—nor could. Then he rallied.
“How you dare make that base and foul attack on a woman better than yourself, God only knows. I can only suppose your mind is poisoned through and through by the Jacobin lies. Never while I live will I forgive you. And this to the husband to whom you owe everything!”
A sudden courage fired her at this most unjust speech.