"O yes, plainly," said Mrs. Montagu.
"Had he a scar down the left side of his face?"
"Yes."
Then Evelyn Forbes, for the first time in her vigorous young life, fainted. Her mother was in the power of Wong Li Fu. All the terrors which imagination had painted in her own behalf were redoubled as to her mother's fate. Her brain reeled. Merciful oblivion came. Theydon and Winter were just able to catch her before she fell like a log.
CHAPTER XI
THE REAPPEARANCE OF HANDYSIDE
Consternation reigned for a while at the entrance to the Royal Devonshire. Men craned their necks and women uttered nervous little shrieks. But Evelyn Forbes was endowed with a vigorous frame and a splendidly vital spirit, and she recovered her senses before she could be carried into the vestibule.
The fact that she had fainted, too, brought to the aid of her waking senses the innate horror of her race and class for anything approaching a "scene," and she was almost unnaturally collected in speech and demeanor within a few seconds after her eyes had reopened.
"Did I give way like that?" she said, with a valiant smile, first at Theydon, and then at the ring of faces, each with its varying expression of curiosity or concern. "How stupid of me! How excessively stupid! That sort of behavior doesn't help at all—does it?... Thank you, I can walk quite well.... I'll just go to mother's room and telephone home.... There has been some silly mistake. By this time it will be rectified, I'm sure.... Come, Mr. Theydon. Where is Mr. Winter?"
"Here," said the detective. "I'll follow in a minute or so. Please don't communicate with London till I arrive."
His quietly insistent tone was meant rather for Theydon than for the half-demented girl, who was stumbling anywhere but in the right direction until Theydon caught her arm and led her to the lift. She contrived to remain outwardly calm until she reached the seclusion of the sitting room, when she broke into a flood of tears, while in disjointed and hysterical words she blamed her own rashness for the fate which had overtaken her mother.