“Did I speak to you?” she turned to bombard him. “Have you not done harm enough? Had you been aught but a fool—had you respected me as a husband should—you had left well alone and let her go her ways.”
“There was my duty to her father, to say aught of—”
“And what of your duty to me?” she blazed, her eyes puckering most malignantly. She reminded Mr. Caryll of nothing so much as a vulture. “Had ye forgotten that? Have ye no thought for decency—no respect for your wife?”
Her strident voice was echoing through the house and drawing a little crowd of gaping servants to the hall. To spare Mistress Winthrop, Mr. Caryll took it upon himself to close the door. The countess turned at the sound.
“Who is this?” she asked, measuring the elegant figure with an evil eye. And Mr. Caryll felt it in his bones that she had done him the honor to dislike him at sight.
“It is a gentleman who—who—” His lordship thought it better, apparently, not to explain the exact circumstances under which he had met the gentleman. He shifted ground. “I was about to present him, my love. It is Mr. Caryll—Mr. Justin Caryll. This, sir, is my Lady Ostermore.”
Mr. Caryll made her a profound bow. Her ladyship retorted with a sniff.
“Is it a kinsman of yours, my lord?” and the contempt of the question was laden with a suggestion that smote Mr. Caryll hard. What she implied in wanton offensive mockery was no more than he alone present knew to be the exact and hideous truth.
“Some remote kinsman, I make no doubt,” the earl explained. “Until yesterday I had not the honor of his acquaintance. Mr. Caryll is from France.”
“Ye'll be a Jacobite, no doubt, then,” were her first, uncompromising words to the guest.