Lady Susan passed quickly round the outside of the group and came straight to Bunbury, her figure in its brilliant modernity accentuating the sombreness of a tragedy of this archaic kind.
“I’m going home,” she said indistinctly, and walked past him; “I feel rather queer from seeing that——” Her voice failed her, and she put her hand to her eyes. Bunbury followed her without a word. It came home with a pang to Slaney’s heart that Lady Susan had turned to him, expecting no quarter from the girl.
She turned to follow them, but she had not gone more than a few yards when she heard a step behind her. Glasgow overtook her, and without speaking began to walk beside her; he looked straight in front of him, and something about his movement and the carriage of his head told her that he was entirely absorbed in hot white anger.
“I hope you are gratified at the result of encouraging superstition,” he said at last, in a voice that told of the inward pressure of feeling.
“It seems to have been more the result of discouraging it,” she replied, without attempting to keep out of her voice the antagonism that was in her heart.
“It would be simpler if you said at once that honest or sane people had better give up having any dealings with the Irish,” he returned hotly.
“Do you mean English people? They certainly have not been eminently successful so far.”
Slaney felt quite cool, and Glasgow wondered how he had ever found her attractive.
“As you are a friend of these Quins,” he said, holding his temper back, but not his imperiousness, “I think it would be as well if you advised that woman to take care about what she says of me, as she may get herself into trouble.”
He forgot for the moment the trouble that lay ahead of him; yet the strong nervous excitement that fed his anger was due to the imminence of that trouble, forgotten or no.