"Of course not," impatiently, "but as soon as possible. Can we manage a private meeting?"
"I can, of course," he answered, with an emphasis on the pronoun. "The risk is yours, not mine. What can you have to say to me?"
The impatient, almost insolent tone in which he addressed her, sent the hot blood to her face.
"You take a high tone," she breathed in suppressed anger.
"Pardon me," he replied, with a fine latent sarcasm in his tone that angered her yet more.
But she kept down her seething resentment with a powerful effort of will.
"Can you come out into the grounds to-night? I have something very important to speak about. I can slip out unnoticed about eleven o'clock," she whispered.
"I will come," he replied, laconically.
She named a place for meeting, then returned to her guests in the drawing-room. Her glance, full of envenomed hate and deadly malice, fell on Irene.
The girl was standing at an open window half-hidden by the falling drapery of the lace curtains, her beautiful, sad young face turned toward the sky. She was looking wondrously lovely in her simple, white mull dress with a great cluster of purple golden-hearted pansies nestled in the filmy lace at her throat, and the veil of her golden hair half hiding the slim, graceful form. Mrs. Stuart wondered at the air of deep sadness that marked the girlish face and caused that pathetic droop of the rosy lips.