'She has done it! Hurrah!' cried Mr. Flaxman. 'What a rush that last was, Miss Leyburn! You left us all behind.'
Rose turned to him, still dazed, drawing her hand across her eyes. A rush? She had known nothing about it!
Mr. Flaxman turned and walked back, apparently to report to his aunt, who, with Lady Helen, had been watching the experiment from the main drawing-room. His face was a curious mixture of gravity and the keenest excitement. The gravity was mostly sharp compunction. He had satisfied a passionate curiosity, but in the doing of it he had outraged certain instincts of breeding and refinement which were now revenging themselves.
'Did she do it exactly?' said Lady Helen eagerly.
'Exactly,' he said, standing still.
Lady Charlotte looked at him significantly. But he would not see her look.
'Lady Charlotte, where is my sister?' said Rose, coming up from the back room, looking now nearly as white as her dress.
It appeared that Agnes had just been carried off by a lady who lived on Campden Hill close to the Leyburns, and who had been obliged to go at the beginning of the last experiment. Agnes, torn between her interest in what was going on and her desire to get back to her mother, had at last hurriedly accepted this Mrs. Sherwood's offer of a seat in her carriage, imagining that her sister would want to stay a good deal later, and relying on Lady Charlotte's promise that she should be safely put into a hansom.
'I must go,' said Rose, putting her hand to her head. 'How tiring this is! How long did it take, Mr. Flaxman?'
'Exactly three minutes,' he said, his gaze fixed upon her with an expression that only Lady Helen noticed.