There was no mistaking the triumphant note in her proclamation.
The girl coloured faintly. They were all looking at her now; the strange woman with a startled face, the man curiously. Some likeness in him to the picture that hung upstairs troubled her. So Barnaby might have looked, his dare-devil glance falling on her with a quizzical compassion.
Rackham's wits were not slow. He crossed over to her side, and took up his station on the hearthrug, so close to her that his splashed scarlet coat almost brushed her black sleeve. Barnaby had been dressed like him in the picture, gallant in hunting clothes. Would Barnaby have stood by her? For she understood the significance of his action. This man wanted to be her friend. She trembled a little, wondering why.
Lady Henrietta took no more notice of him than if he had been a vexing shadow put in his place. His strategic movement was lost on her. Barnaby's mother, in her thirst to punish, her eagerness in striking for the sake of her son, had not time to consider that the sword in her hand was his wife. Her eyes were shining with the fire that had burnt up her tears, and they were fixed on the enchantress who had wrecked Barnaby's life, and was trading on his old infatuation, making a bid for public sympathy by flaunting her forfeited hold on him.
"I can't understand," said Julia, with a gasp. "Barnaby was not married...."
But she was shaken. Her blank amazement was turning visibly to dismay. This stroke was so sharp, so inconceivable, that she lost her head, refusing to believe in the humbling revelation.
"It's a plot!" she cried all at once. "A plot against me. What have I done to be treated like this? Why should I be insulted?—Everybody knows that Barnaby and I——"
"Don't be an idiot, Julia," said Rackham softly, but it was not his interruption that stopped her passionate surrender to the Irish-woman's instinct to have it out with the world.
Perhaps the actress was uppermost in Susan, or perhaps an odd impulse of loyalty to the dead man whose ring she wore carried her out of herself. Her heart was hot against the woman who had played fast and loose with him, and it taught her how one who belonged to Barnaby would have faced this moment. His wife would not be a coward, would not sit, a piteous listener, in the background; she had his memory to uphold. And so she found herself standing up, confronting the stranger in a proud silence that was more eloquent than reproach. Slowly, without a word, she moved onwards to leave the room.
"Gad!" said Rackham, under his breath. He liked that.