She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind. If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.
She looked at the little silver box she had taken up that night when she was angry, then at the grand piano in the further room. The two things suggested to her two women—the woman of hot temper and the woman of sweetness and romance. What was she to-night, and what was she going to do? Nothing, probably. What could she do? Again she glanced round the rooms. It seemed to her that she was like an actress in an intense, passionate role, who is paralysed by what is called in the theatre “a stage wait.” She ought to play a tremendous scene, now, at once, but the person with whom she was to play it did not come on to the stage. She had worked herself up for the scene. The emotion, the passion, the force, the fury were alive, were red hot within her, and she could not set them free. She remained alone upon the stage in a sort of horror of dumbness, a horror of inaction.
The footman came in quietly with the lemonade on a tray. He put it down on a table by Lady Holme.
“Is there anything else, my lady?”
She supposed that the question was meant as a very discreet hint to her that the man would be glad to go to bed. For a moment she did not reply, but kept him waiting. She was thinking rapidly, considering whether she would do the desperate thing or not, whether she would summon one of the actors for the violent scene her nature demanded persistently that night.
After the opera she had been due at a ball to which Leo Ulford was going. She had promised to go in to supper with him and to arrive by a certain hour. He was wondering, waiting, now, at this moment. She knew that. The house was in Eaton Square, not far off. Should she send the footman with a note to Leo, saying that she was too tired to come to the ball but that she was sitting up at home? That was what she was rapidly considering while the footman stood waiting. Leo would come, and then—presently—Lord Holme would come. And then? Then doubtless would happen the scene she longed for, longed for with a sort of almost crazy desire such as she had never felt before.
She glanced up and saw an astonished expression upon the footman’s pale face. How long had she kept him there waiting? She had no idea.
“There is nothing else,” she said slowly.
She paused, then added, reluctantly:
“You can go to bed.”