His eyes flickered. “Glyde. Your friend. You seek your champions all about, it seems. You make things snug for yourself. It's master or man with you—it's all one.”
He spluttered his venom broadcast. She held up her head. “Are you insulting me?” He wheeled round full in his chair.
“Is it possible to insult you?”
At that she lowered her panoply of fire, and grew still. “I see that you are. I can't allow that.”
He foamed. “Bullies in your hire. Now I see what Bill Chevenix was after. And Glyde-faugh! who else?”
She watched him steadily without fear or disgust. His words held no meaning for her. “I think you must be mad,” she said. “It will be better if I go.”
He scoffed at her. “Better! You are right.” He rose in his place. “You'll go to-day.”
Sanchia regarded him deeply, almost curiously, as if he had been a plant, interesting for its rarity.
“Naturally,” she said, and left him in his staring fit.
The ordered little realm of Wanless went on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think of him as “poor Struan,” Punchinello in a rustic comedy. Of Ingram, deliberately, she thought nothing. It had been necessary to survey her feelings of eight years ago, to make a sour face of disgust over them, before she could shake them out of her head. Now they were gone, and he with them: the world, with May beginning, was too sweet a place for such vermin to fester in. She had swept and ridded herself, rinsed her mouth with pure water, and now could sit to her dinner and review her plans.