"I think my lady means to run away with Mr. Marius."
"Oh, my God!" murmured Susannah. She rose desperately and looked wildly about her. "My God, what shall I do?"
"She has gone to his lodgings," continued Honoria. "She is there now. I never believed that she would do anything so desperate, but it is amazing how she hates my lord."
"Captain Lyndwood will bring her back," cried Susannah, remembering last night. "I can trust him for that. He will see her insanity, and bring her back."
"Do you think so?" asked Honoria. "If she throws herself on his pity, madam?"
The flash of hope died away. How could she tell what Marius would see as his duty? He was inflamed against the Earl, rejected by herself, bitter against his world. In a manner the Countess had always been on his conscience. She had no guarantee that he would not respond to my lady's madness, and her mind rushed forward to that piteous terrible picture of flight, pursuit, and an unworthy death for one of them by fratricide.
In her bitterness she turned on Honoria.
"Why have you come to me? You—you who have ministered to all this creature's vilest qualities, you who were at the back of this in the paper, you who have ever dragged her down—why have you come here smugly to tell me of this last shame?"
Honoria Pryse rose.
"I came to ask you if you cared to help me prevent it," she said, in no way stirred. "It is not to my interest that my mistress should hurl herself into the gutter. What do I become but a target for the vengeance of my lord? I thought that you would not care to see your house disgraced. I believed that you would give a great deal to save the Earl of Lyndwood's name from infamy."