"Of a son!" said Plant, eyeing the ceiling.
"Un fils!" shrieked Rivaulx.
Gordon said "Damnation;" De Vere shook like a stranded jelly-fish; Bramber went as scarlet as a lobster, and then as white as cotton; Carteret Williams looked blue, and Carew looked green, and Bob said: "My eye!"
There is something organic in any given number of people acting under the same shock or the same impulse. What one thinks another thinks; and now all the room fixed their eyes on Titania, whose lips moved in silence.
"This is dreadful!" said Titania to herself. "I don't believe she's married at all. One of these men is a scoundrel, a ruffian, a seducer!"
No one heard what she said, but as she thought it the men looked at each other with awful suspicions. And then Titania, whose mind was whirling, said feebly:
"We—we must hush it up!"
And there lay the Times! Hush it up indeed! And Bradstock recovered some of his equanimity.
"Nonsense! She's married, as she says," he remarked, with comparative coolness.
But no one believed it. The men drew apart from each other. De Vere moved his chair, because Goby was looking at him like a demon. Carew shrank from Carteret Williams. Gordon went livid under Plant's eyes. Bramber looked at them all as if he would die on the spot. Rivaulx rose up and waltzed around the room. It was a happy chance that he did so; it is possible that he saved immediate bloodshed. Bradstock and Bob caught the Frenchman in their arms, and led him outside to the lawn, where there was ample room for a frantic pas seul.