And inside her she smiled, and the shaking of her body began to subside.
But before her courage was firm in the saddle there came footsteps in the passage—a foot that she knew. The key grated, the door opened, and Melchard entered the room, dressed in a soft, new-looking suit of purplish grey; the jacket too long in the body and too close in the waist, the wide, unstarched cuffs of the mauve shirt turned back—an embryo fashion—over the coat-sleeves.
And with him came the miasma of that nauseating perfume.
The mercy of God sent her anger, and she forgot that she rose before this intruder covered only in white princess petticoat, green silk stockings and high-heeled bronze shoes.
The petticoat was cut low on neck and shoulders, and the white of the lace shoulder-straps showed bluish between the warm cream-colour of neck and of arms. The face, a moment before pale and worn almost to haggardness, was now flushed with the indignation which gave point and edge to the words which overwhelmed for a moment even the shameless and commercialized criminal.
Of what he was, she knew little, but what she thought of him he could not escape hearing.
Yet, when she paused in, rather than concluded her invective, he had already recovered his effrontery.
"My dear Miss Caldegard," he said, "we were compelled last night, for your own good, to exhibit a mild opiate. Your health required it. It has impaired, I fear, your memory of the circumstances which have brought you under my care. When you have had a few weeks in which to benefit by the devoted care and scientific attention which we shall bring to bear on your case, you will learn to look on me as what I am—your medical attendant, and to forget—or—or——" and here he ogled her horribly with his fine eyes—"or remember in a new fashion your old lover."
And with this disgusting phrase he came close up to her.
"Lover still," he said, "though discarded and trampled upon."