“Then I thought of you. I had never meant to tell anyone but Beryl, but as I could do nothing to help her, and as she is perhaps, really in danger—she is only a girl, and she spoke of the fascination of fear—I felt I must make a further effort to do something. And I thought of you.”
“Why was that?” asked Sir Seymour, turning towards her, but not impulsively.
“Because I knew if anyone could stop this thing you could.”
“That was your reason?”
“That—and—and I knew that I could never tell all this—about myself, I mean—to anyone but you. For ten years no one has known it.”
“You felt you could tell me!”
The way in which he said those words was so inexpressive that Lady Sellingworth did not know what was the feeling behind them, whether it was astonishment, indignation, or something quite different.
“I—I didn’t want to—” She almost faltered, again full of fear, almost of terror. “I was afraid to. But I felt I could, and I had told Beryl so.”
“I wonder what made you feel you could,” he said, still in the same curiously inexpressive way.
She said nothing. She leaned back on the sofa and her hands began to move restlessly, nervously. She plucked at her dress, put a hand to the ruby pinned in the front of her bodice, lifted the hand to her face, laid it on the back of the sofa.