The man went softly out of the room. As he shut the door she breathed a deep sigh, that was almost a sob. So difficult had she found it to govern herself, not to do the crazy thing.
She poured out the lemonade and put ice into it.
As she did so she made grimaces, absurd grimaces of pain and misery, like those on the faces of the two women in Mantegna’s picture of Christ and the Marys in the Brera at Milan. They are grotesque, yet wonderfully moving in their pitiless realism. But tears fall from the eyes of Mantegna’s women and no tears fell from Lady Holme’s eyes. Still making grimaces, she sipped the lemonade. Then she put down the glass, leaned back on the sofa and shut her eyes. Her face ceased to move, and became beautiful again in its stillness. She remained motionless for a long time, trying to obtain the mastery over herself. In act she had obtained it already, but not in emotion. Indeed, the relinquishing of violence, the sending of the footman to bed, seemed to have increased the passion within her. And now she felt it rising till she was afraid of being herself, afraid of being this solitary woman, feeling intensely and able to do nothing. It seemed to her as if such a passion of jealousy, and desire for immediate expression of it in action, as flamed within her, must wreak disaster upon her like some fell disease, as if she were in immediate danger, even in immediate physical danger. She lay still like one determined to meet it bravely, without flinching, without a sign of cowardice.
But suddenly she felt that she had made a mistake in dismissing the footman, that the pain of inaction was too great for her to bear. She could not just—do nothing. She could not, and she got up swiftly and rang the bell. The man did not return. She pressed the bell again. After three or four minutes he came in, looking rather flushed and put out.
“I want you to take a note to Eaton Square,” she said. “It will be ready in five minutes.”
“Yes, my lady.”
She went to her writing table and wrote this note to Leo Ulford:
“DEAR MR. ULFORD,—I am grieved to play you false, but I am too
tired to-night to come on. Probably you are amusing yourself. I
am sitting here alone over such a dull book. One can’t go to bed
at twelve, somehow, even if one is tired. The habit of the season’s
against early hours and one couldn’t sleep. Be nice and come in for
five minutes on your way home, and tell me all about it. I know you
pass the end of the square, so it won’t be out of your way.—Yours
very sincerely, V. H.”
After writing this note Lady Holme hesitated for a moment, then she went to a writing table, opened a drawer and took out a tiny, flat key. She enclosed it in two sheets of thick note paper, folded the note also round it, and put it into an envelope which she carefully closed. After writing Leo Ulford’s name on the envelope she rang again for the footman.
“Take this to Eaton Square,” she said, naming the number of the house. “And give it to Mr. Ulford yourself. Go in a hansom. When you have given Mr. Ulford the note come straight back in the hansom and let me know. After that you can go to bed. Do you understand?”