“I wish to speak to you alone,” she said, ignoring with steady eyes the woman whom she had ostensibly come to see.
John Rex hesitated, but Sarah saw the danger, and hastened to confront it. “A wife should be a husband's best friend, madam. Your son married me of his own free will, and even his mother can have nothing to say to him which it is not my duty and privilege to hear. I am not a girl as you can see, and I can bear whatever news you bring.”
Lady Devine bit her pale lips. She saw at once that the woman before her was not gently-born, but she felt also that she was a woman of higher mental calibre than herself. Prepared as she was for the worst, this sudden and open declaration of hostilities frightened her, as Sarah had calculated. She began to realize that if she was to prove equal to the task she had set herself, she must not waste her strength in skirmishing. Steadily refusing to look at Richard's wife, she addressed herself to Richard. “My brother will be here in half an hour,” she said, as though the mention of his name would better her position in some way. “But I begged him to allow me to come first in order that I might speak to you privately.”
“Well,” said John Rex, “we are in private. What have you to say?”
“I want to tell you that I forbid you to carry out the plan you have for breaking up Sir Richard's property.”
“Forbid me!” cried Rex, much relieved. “Why, I only want to do what my father's will enables me to do.”
“Your father's will enables you to do nothing of the sort, and you know it.” She spoke as though rehearsing a series of set-speeches, and Sarah watched her with growing alarm.
“Oh, nonsense!” cries John Rex, in sheer amazement. “I have a lawyer's opinion on it.”
“Do you remember what took place at Hampstead this day nineteen years ago?”
“At Hampstead!” said Rex, grown suddenly pale. “This day nineteen years ago. No! What do you mean?”