He would have held her back, but she walked resolutely, if somewhat purposelessly, round the long curve of the verandah, and stood still, looking at the light that streamed out of the ballroom and glistened on the leaves of a range of palms and crotons in pots that made a seclusion there.
“Then,” said Ancram, “I am to go on with the forlorn comfort of a guess. I ought to be thankful, I suppose, that you can’t take that from me. Perhaps you would,” he added bitterly, “if you could know how precious it is.”
His words seemed to fix her in a half-formed resolve. Her hand slipped out of his arm, and she took a step away from him toward the crotons. Against their dark green leaves he saw, with some alarm, how white her face was.
“Listen,” she said: “I think you do not realise it, but I know you are hard and cruel. You ask me if I am not to you what I ought to be to my husband, who is a good man, and who loves me, and trusts you. And, what is worse, this has come up between us at a time when he is threatened and troubled: on the very night when I meant—when I meant”—she stopped to conquer the sob in her throat—“to have asked you to think of something that might be done to help him. Well, but you ask me if I have come to love you, and perhaps in a way you have a right to know; and the truth is better, as you say. And I answer you that I have. I answer you yes, it is true, and I know it will always be true. But from to-night you will remember that every time I look into your face and touch your hand I hurt my own honour and my husband’s, and—and you will not let me see you often.”
As Ancram opened his lips to speak, the cheer from the Maidan smote the air again, and this time it seemed nearer. Judith took his arm nervously.
“What can they be doing out there?” she exclaimed. “Let us go—I must find my husband—let us go!”
They crossed the threshold into the ballroom, where John Church joined them almost immediately, his black brows lightened by an unusually cheerful expression.
“I’ve been having a long talk with His Excellency,” he said to them jointly. “An uncommonly capable fellow, Scansleigh. He tells me he has written a strong private letter to the Secretary of State about this Notification of mine. That’s bound to have weight, you know, in case they make an attempt to get hold of Parliament at home.”
As Mrs. Church and Mr. Lewis Ancram left the verandah a chair was suddenly pushed back behind the crotons. Miss Rhoda Daye had been sitting in the chair, alone too, with the south wind and the stars. She had no warning of what she was about to overhear—no sound had reached her, either of their talk or their approach—and in a somewhat agitated colloquy with herself she decided that nothing could be so terrible as her personal interruption of what Mrs. Church was saying. That lady’s words, though low and rapid, were very distinct, and Rhoda heard them out involuntarily, with a strong disposition to applaud her and to love her. Then she turned a key upon her emotions and Judith Church’s secret, and slipped quietly out to look for her mother, who asked her, between her acceptance of an ice from the Home Secretary and a petit four from the General Commanding the Division, why on earth she looked so depressed.
