Eleanor felt her whole heart convulsed in the struggle to answer or not answer this question. With great difficulty she kept herself outwardly perfectly quiet; and at last said hoarsely, looking away from Mr. Rhys into the fire,
"How do you know anything about it?"
"Have you yielded obedience to his commands?" he said, disregarding her words.
"I do not know what they are—" Eleanor answered.
"Have you sought to find them out?"
She hesitated, and said "no." Her face was completely turned away from him now; but the tender intonation of the next words thrilled through every nerve of her heart and brain.
"Then your head is uncovered yet by that helmet of security which you were anxious about a little time ago?"
It was the speech of somebody who saw right into her heart and knew all that was going on there; what was the use of holding out and trying to maintain appearances? Eleanor's head sank; her heart gave way; she burst into tears. Now was her chance, she thought; the ice was broken; she would ask of Mr. Rhys all she wanted to know, for he could tell her. Before another word was spoken, in rushed Julia.
"I've got that going," she said; "you shall have some tea directly, Mr. Rhys. I hope Mrs. Williams will stay away till I get through. Now it will take a little while—come here, Eleanor, and look at these beautiful ferns."
Eleanor was sitting upright again; she had driven the tears back. She hoped for another chance of speaking, when Julia should go to get her tea ready. In the mean while she moved her seat, as her sister desired her, to look over the ferns. This brought her into the neighbourhood of the couch, where Julia sat on a low bench, turning the great sheets of paper on the floor before her. It brought Eleanor's face into full view, too, she knew; but now she did not care for that. Julia went on rapturously with the ferns, asking information as before; and in Mr. Rhys's answers there was a grave tone of preoccupation which thrilled on Eleanor's ear and kept her own mind to the point where it had been.