Kissing her hand, Frederick bowed himself out and was slowly descending the wide staircase when he heard himself called by name.
Turning himself quickly round he saw Lady Alice standing at the head of the stairs and beckoning to him. Was this the bright and happy girl whom he had left but a few hours ago? Her head leaned backward against the high, carved panel of the wall, her face was deadly pale and cold, and had the immutability of a mask of stone. Other women might moan aloud in their misery and curse their fate, but she was one of those who choke down their hearts in silence and conceal their death-wounds.
A few steps brought Frederick to her side. He did not dare to salute her, for it seemed to him as if her whole being shrank within her as she saw him there. Without looking at him, she spoke in a voice quite firm though it was faint from feebleness.
“I have but little to say to you. I want only to ask you, how and where you parted last night with—with—him?”
She almost lost her self-control. Her lips trembled and she pressed her hand on her breast.
Frederick staggered slightly, as if under some sword-stroke from an unseen hand. A great faintness came upon him. For a moment he was speechless and mute. She looked up at him steadily once. Then she spoke again in that cold, forced, measured voice which seemed to his ear as hard and pitiless as the strokes of an iron hammer.
“I ask you how you parted with him?”
With a mighty effort he broke the spell which held him mute, and murmured, with a suffocated sound in his voice, as though some hand were clutching at his throat:
“I left him well and happy. Why do you ask me? I know nothing more.”