For a full moment he and Elisabeth stared at each other in a silence so vital, so pregnant with some terrible significance, that it impacted upon the whole prevailing atmosphere of care-free jollity.
A sudden muteness descended on the party, the laughing voices trailing off into affrighted silence, and in the dumb stillness that followed Sara was vibrantly conscious of the hostile clash of wills between the man and woman who had, in a single instant, become the central figures of the little group.
Then Elisabeth's voice—that amazingly sweet voice of hers—broke the profound quiet.
“Mr.—Trent”—she hesitated delicately before the name—“and I have met before.”
And quite deliberately, with a proud, inflexible dignity, she turned her back upon him and moved away.
Sara never forgot the few moments that followed. She felt as though she were on the brink of some crisis in her life which had been slowly drawing nearer and nearer to her and was now acutely imminent, and instinctively she sought to gather all her energies together to meet it. What it might be she could not guess, but she was sure that this declared enmity between the man she loved and the woman who was her friend preluded some menace to her happiness.
Her eyes sought Garth's in horror-stricken interrogation.
“What is it? What does she mean?” she demanded swiftly, in a breathless undertone, instinctively drawing aside from the rest of the party.
He laughed shortly.
“She means mischief, probably,” he replied. “Mrs. Durward is no friend of mine.”