I could have sworn the voice was Lady Clive's; a pink domino passed us too fast for detention, but Earlscourt's lips turned white at the subtle whisper, and he muttered a fierce oath—fiercer from him, because he's never stirred into fiery expletives. "There is some vile plot against her. I must sift it to the bottom;" and, pushing past me, he entered the ball room. Beatrice was not there; and wending his way through the crowd, he went in through several other apartments leading off to the right, and involuntarily I followed him, to see what the malicious whisper of the pink domino had meant. Earlscourt lifted the curtain that parted the anteroom from the other chamber—lifted it to see Beatrice Boville, as the pink domino had prophesied, and not alone! With her was a man, masked, but about Earlscourt's height, and seemingly about his age, who, as he saw us, let go her hand with a laugh, turned on to a balcony, which was but a yard or so from the street, and dropped on to the pave below. Beatrice started and colored, but I thought she must be the most desperate actress going, for she came up to Earlscourt with a smile, and was about to put her hand through his arm, but he signed her away from him.
"Your acting is quite useless with me. I am not to be blinded by it again. I have believed in your truth as in my own—"
"So you may still. Listen to me, Ernest!"
"Hush! Do not add falsehood to falsehood."
He spoke sternly and coldly; his pride, which was as strong as his love for her, would not gratify her by a sign of the torture within him, and even in his bitterest anger Earlscourt would never have been ungentle to a woman. That word acted like an incantation on her, the blood crimsoned her temples, her eyes literally flashed fire, and she threw back her head with the haughty, impatient gesture habitual to her.
"Falsehood? Three times of late you have used that word to me."
"And why? Because you merited it."
She stood before him, the indignant flush hotter still upon her cheeks, her lips curved into scornful anger. If she was an actress, she knew her rôle to perfection.
"Do you speak that seriously, Lord Earlscourt? Do you believe that I have lied to you?"
"God help me! What else can I believe?" he muttered, too low for her to hear it.