She shrank away from the door as if she saw the man behind it.
“What do they talk of?” she asked heavily.
“Why, madam,” he answered dryly, “what business is that of yours?”
She shook her head drearily and crossed to the window; in the gray light of the winter afternoon her face and figure showed one dull whiteness; her pale hair, her white dress and her pallor made her appear ghostlike in the somber room. A few flakes of snow were falling across the leaden sky; Lady Dalrymple stared out at the bleak square and the bare trees.
“Madam, have you no occupation?” asked the Viscount suavely.
“No,” she answered, without looking round.
“There are pleasanter ways of doing nothing,” he observed, “than contemplating a dreariness.”
“My lord—I see nothing else—wherever I look.” She turned her head and her dim blue eyes rested on him.
“An unfortunate disposition,” he remarked.
She came down the room restlessly, her head hanging a little.