There was an indescribable tone in his voice, ominous and vindictive. And as he spoke, Mrs. Romayne’s face seemed to grow old, and her eyes dilated.
“It can be put right,” she said, in a quick, uncertain voice. “He will apologise. You will forgive——”
Loring interrupted her, very coldly and incisively.
“He will not apologise!” he said. “And I should not accept any apology. I needn’t suggest, of course, that, under the circumstances, our acquaintance, much as I regret this, had perhaps better cease.”
They faced each other for another moment, and into Mrs. Romayne’s eyes there crept a sick despair strangely incongruous with the surface appearance of the position. Then she seemed to recover herself as if with a tremendous effort of will. She drew herself up, bowed her head with grave dignity, and moved to leave the room. He held the door open for her with an absolutely expressionless countenance. She passed down the hall to where the servant was waiting at the door, went out, and got into her carriage alone.
Loring stood at the foot of the stairs watching her, and then turned with a cruel contentment in his eyes, and went upstairs again to the drawing-room.
The two elder ladies were sitting with their heads very close together, as he opened the drawing-room door, evidently deep in some question of domestic importance. And standing by a conservatory window at the other end of the room, a rather bored-looking figure in its solitary girlishness, was Maud Pomeroy. The occasion being, as has been said, something of an anomaly, conventions were not so strict as usual. Lady Bracondale just glanced up with a vague smile as Loring reappeared, and then became absorbed in conversation as he strolled across to Maud Pomeroy. She looked up at him with a faint smile.
“Has Mrs. Romayne gone?” she said.
He signified a careless assent, and then said: