“And I demand, madam, that you remove your mask!” he replied.
My lady drew herself erect.
“Is this necessary, sir?” she said coldly.
“If we are to continue the conversation, madam,” my lord answered, “I prefer that it should be face to face.”
“Or if you have scruples, madam,” Mistress Maddon, who was standing near to the window, cried suddenly, “I notice that your ladyship’s servants grow impatient.”
With a sudden passionate gesture my lady tore the riding mask from her face and flung it from her.
“Are you satisfied, sir?” she cried with flashing eyes, in the depths of which I read all the scorn of her surroundings, all the loathing of the people in whose presence she was. And as I gazed at where she stood, with the dying sunlight falling on her graceful figure and turning the masses of her hair to burnished gold, surely, I told myself, never had I seen so fearless a lady nor so fair a face.
And could there be a greater contrast than that afforded by the two women before me? The one so proud and pure, so rich in all the noblest qualities endowing womanhood, the other with the glamour of passion long since decayed, leaving but the barren busk of sin in its train.
I glanced at my lord. As he gazed upon her beauty, into his eyes there crept a look such as I had seen upon men’s faces before.
“Of what measure of truth there was in the story told you I do not seek to learn,” my lady continued proudly. “But I demand the immediate release of M. de Launay as the least reparation you can offer for the outrage committed by this man, whose very presence in my house was an insult, and was resented by me as such.”