The ordeal, however, was yet to come.
By general request, eagerly urged, Lester Vane commenced his recital. Helen perceived that he closely and scrutinisingly perused her features while he spoke, and a strange feeling took sudden possession of her.
It was a contemptuous consciousness of a superiority in the power of deception. She knew that he was trying to read what was passing within her heart. She applied herself to the task of baffling him, feeling that she could accomplish it with ease. It was her first direct essay in simulation under strong pressure, but she went to the task with the skill of a practised adept.
Cunning is not alone an art—it is necessarily a part of human organisation: but to become subtle and refined, it requires to be cultivated with careful discrimination, and to be pursued with merciless indifference to the feelings of the object upon whom it is exercised. The crafty rarely fails to detect the crafty, unless the more crafty with consummate ability assumes genuine simplicity—then as there appears to be nothing to guard against, cunning is to be effectively deceived by an affectation of its absence.
Helen never troubled herself to reason upon the point, though she had plenty of natural shrewdness to have reached this conclusion, if she had addressed her mind to the task. She was naturally an accomplished actress, and with no great effort could have seemed as full of natural wonderment at what had happened as her sisters Margaret and Evangeline, but she decided upon adopting a defiant aspect—one which should say to Vane, “You seek by an attempt to confuse me with your steadfast gaze, to compel me to make an admission—I defy you.” It was a mistake, because that look at once raised up an impression in his mind that she had something to conceal—that though she listened to his story attentively, met his gaze at certain parts of the recital unflinchingly, made remarks, and put questions—all tending to disconnect her with any share in the transaction—she was in some degree mixed up with, if she was not one of, the principal actors in the little drama.
It is true that Evangeline exhibited emotions of distress and confusion, but he detected in her conduct no sign of guilt, nothing by which he could presume her to have been a participator in the scene he believed himself to have disturbed, if even she were a confidante; but Helen, by her manner, challenged his suspicions, and, as it appeared to him, laughed them to scorn; yet in doing so, gave him reason to form a conviction that they were well grounded. He set his teeth, and felt the blood mount to his sallow features.
It was but for a moment, and he became as pale as before, but he determined to apply himself to the task of making himself master of Helen’s secret, and by its possession master of her, to be used as his own selfish interests might dictate.
He related to his marvelling auditors how he had escaped from the dining room to allay the heat of his fevered blood in the cool air which had been playing among the fragrant flower-beds, and sighing through the graceful trees in the elegantly arranged garden.
For the sake of effect, the speaker adopted a poetical style of narration, not without success upon the majority of his listeners.
The lip of Helen curled; to her the chosen language was another proof of this man’s art, and she scarcely attempted to disguise from him that such was her impression. A sense of her estimate of his display, added only to the intensity of his resolve to obtain entire power over her, that he might make her endure tenfold the annoyance—it was something more—which she made him suffer now.