"Tom!"
"Oh, you may Tom me, you don't alter it," he answered roughly. "I am hanged if I understand or know what's a-foot. Here are you and I sitting at home like sick cats, and my lord and my lady up and down and in and out, as thick as thieves. That is what it comes to. 'Tis vastly pretty, isn't it?" Tom continued with a cynical laugh. "I think you said she was under your protection. Oh, Lord."
Hitherto, astonishment had robbed Sophia of speech. But with Tom's last word her sense of her duty to herself and to her husband awoke, and found her words.
"You wicked boy!" she cried with indignation. "You wicked, miserable boy! How dare you even think such things, much more say them, and say them to me! Never hint at such things again if you wish to--to keep your sister. Sir Hervey and I understand one another, you may be sure of that."
"Well, I am glad you do," Tom muttered. "For I don't!" But he spoke shamefacedly, and only to cover his discomfiture.
"We understand one another perfectly," Sophia replied with pride, and drew herself to her full height. "For my friend, she is above your suspicions, as far above them as, I thank God, is my husband. No, not another word, I have heard too much already. I don't wish to speak to you again until you are in a better mind, sir."
She turned from him, crossed the terrace with her proudest step, and entered the house. But underneath she was panting with excitement, her head was in a whirl. She dared not think; and to avoid thought--thought that might lower her in her own eyes, thought that might wrong her husband--she hastened through the hall to the still-room; and finding that the ash-keys which she had ordered to be done with green whey had been boiled with white, was sharp with the maid, and tart with Mrs. Stokes. Thence she flew in a bustle up the wide staircase, and along the corridor under portraits of dead Cokes, to her room; but there, thought seemed inevitable, it was in vain she paced the floor. And feverishly tying the strings of her hat she hurried down again, her face burning. She would walk.
At the outer door she paused. She saw that Tom was still there, and she was unwilling to pass him, lest he read in this sudden activity the sign of disturbance. The pause was fatal. A moment she stood irresolute, fighting with herself and her cowardly impulses. Then she opened the door of the grand drawing-room, and gliding like a culprit down its shadowy length, opened the door of the smaller' room, and closed that too behind her. This inner room was little used in the daytime, and though the windows were open the curtains were drawn across them. Stealthily, fearing to be observed, she raised the corner of the nearest curtain and turned to look at Lady Anne's picture; the lodestone that had drawn her hither as the candle draws the moth. But she never looked; for as she turned she met her own face, pale, anxious, plain--yes plain--staring from the mirror at her shoulder, and what use to look after that? To look would not make Lady Anne less comely or herself more fair. She let the curtain fall.
But she stood. Some one was passing the open window. A voice she knew spoke, a second voice answered. And from where she stood Sophia heard their words as if they had spoken in the room.