Mrs. Swinford threw up her hands again, with the dazzling rings. There was a thrill and tremble in her whole frame with the excitement of the story, which was so elaborately false yet so nearly true. The young man had not seated himself a second time. He stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, his head bent, looking down upon the blazing fire.
‘And you?’ he said, ‘you allowed a girl to go out of your house like that—a girl, unprotected?’
‘What could I do?’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘I was not her keeper, neither was I in command of affairs. I tell you that my husband insisted——’
‘For the marriage, you said, for a marriage—that was very different.’
‘Ah, you are difficile! And she, a hot-headed girl full of her own attractions, do you think she would be restrained——’
‘From leaving home with her lover in the dead of night?’
‘Her lover!’ cried Mrs. Swinford, with the tingling laugh; ‘her lover!’
‘Was he not her lover? For heaven’s sake say what you mean.’
There was a little pause again, through which her laugh ran on, as if she could not stop it when once it had begun. Lord Will was the first to speak. He said: ‘All this is very curious and dramatic and strange; but the one question of my uncle’s marriage is, after all, the chief thing. I don’t think my father ever entertained any doubt. It is in the peerage——’
‘That is no proof,’ said Mrs. Swinford sharply.