Mr. Caryll, imperturbable outwardly, but very ill at ease within, smiled and waved the delicate hand that appeared through the heavy ruffle at his wrist. “Madam, indeed—ah—your ladyship goes very fast. You leap so at conclusions for which no grounds can exist. His lordship is so overwrought—as well he may be, alas!—that he cares not before whom he speaks. Is it not plainly so?”
She smiled very sourly. “You are a very master of evasion, sir. But your evasion gives me the answer that I lack—that and his lordship's face. I drew my bow at a venture; yet look, sir, and tell me, has my quarrel missed its mark?”
And, indeed, the sudden fear and consternation written on my lord's face was so plain that all might read it. He was—as Mr. Caryll had remarked on the first occasion that they met—the worst dissembler that ever set hand to a conspiracy. He betrayed himself at every step, if not positively, by incautious words, why then by the utter lack of control he had upon his countenance.
He made now a wild attempt to bluster. “Lies! Lies!” he protested. “Your ladyship's a-dreaming. Should I be making bad worse by plotting at my time of life? Should I? What can King James avail me, indeed?”
“'Tis what I will ask Rotherby to help me to discover,” she informed him.
“Rotherby?” he cried. “Would you tell that villain what you suspect? Would you arm him with another weapon for my undoing?”
“Ha!” said she. “You admit so much, then?” And she laughed disdainfully. Then with a sudden sternness, a sudden nobility almost in the motherhood which she put forward—“Rotherby is my son,” she said, “and I'll not have my son the victim of your follies as well as of your injustice. We may curb the one and the other yet, my lord.”
And she swept out, fan going briskly in one hand, her long ebony cane swinging as briskly in the other.
“O God!” groaned Ostermore, and sat down heavily.
Mr. Caryll helped himself copiously to snuff. “I think,” said he, his voice so cool that it had an almost soothing influence, “I think your lordship has now another reason why you should go no further in this matter.”