"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.
Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on her stick.
"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned. I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house, the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"
The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.
"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."
"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all. Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"
She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and waited.
"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry, slowly, "of observing her and Jacob Delafield?"
She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting above a pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the effect she listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back uncertainly.
"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"