"Yes, my lady." She heard a pause, and the soft rustle of a dress.
"Tell Lady Maxwell, please"—she struggled hard for the right, the dignified tone—"that if it is not too late for her to stay, I am now able to see her."
She hurried back into the drawing-room and waited. Would she come? Letty's whole being was now throbbing with one mad desire. If Kenrick let her go!
But steps approached; the door was thrown open.
Marcella Maxwell came in timidly, very pale, the dark eyes shrinking from the sudden light of the drawing-room. She was bareheaded, and wore a long cloak of black lace over her white evening dress. Letty's flash of thought as she saw her was twofold: first, hatred of her beauty, then triumph in the evident nervousness with which her visitor approached her.
Without making the slightest change of position, the mistress of the house spoke first.
"Will you please tell me," she said, in her sharpest, thinnest voice, "to what I owe the honour of this visit?"
Marcella paused half-way towards her hostess.
"I read your letter to my husband," she said quietly, though her voice shook, "and I thought you would hardly refuse to let me speak to you about it."
"Then perhaps you will sit down," said Letty, in the same voice; and she seated herself.