There was a long silence. At last, unable any longer to bear his steadfast gaze, she laughed sharply, and, tripping across the room, threw herself in a chair.
‘Well?’ she said, looking up at him with a wicked smile.
His predominant thought then found a broken utterance.
‘It is true, then!—and I believed you dead!’
‘No doubt,’ she answered, showing her white teeth maliciously, ‘and you are doubtless very sorry to find yourself mistaken. No, I am very much alive, as you see. I would gladly have died to oblige you, but it was impossible, mon cher. But won’t you take a seat? We can talk as well sitting as standing, and I am very tired.’
Almost involuntarily, he obeyed her, and taking a chair sat down, still with his wild eyes fixed upon her face.
‘My God!’ he murmured. ‘And you are still the same, after all these years.’
She leant back in her chair, surveying him critically. It was obvious that her light manner concealed a certain dread of him; for her bare bosom rose and fell quickly, and her breath came in short sharp pants.
‘And you, my dear Ambrose, are not much changed—a little older, of course, for you were only a foolish boy then, but still very much the same. I suppose, by your clerical necktie, that you have gone into the Church? Have you got on well? I am sure I hope so, with all my heart; and I always said you were cut out for that kind of life.’
He listened to her like one listening to some evil spirit in a dream. It was difficult for him to believe the evidence of his own senses. He had been so certain that the woman was dead and buried past recall!