She sat without uttering a word. What, indeed, could she find to say?
‘Come, come, Lady Renshaw,’ resumed Sir William smilingly; ‘there is no occasion for you to be downhearted. The best thing that you and I can do will be to draw up and sign—metaphorically—a treaty of peace, to which Woodruffe here shall act as witness. The terms of the treaty shall be these: you on your part shall promise to keep locked up in your bosom as a sacred secret, not even to be hinted at to your dearest friend, that knowledge respecting the married life of Madame De Vigne which has come so strangely into your possession; while I on my part will promise faithfully to keep undivulged those particulars concerning your ladyship’s early career of which I have just made mention—which, and others too that I could mention, although you could in nowise help them, I feel sure that you would not care to have published on the housetops. Come, what say you, shall it be a compact between us?’
‘As you please,’ she answered sullenly as she rose from her chair, adding with a contemptuous shrug, ‘I have no wish to injure Madame De Vigne.’
‘Nor I the slightest desire to humiliate Lady Renshaw.’
Was it possible that this man, whose tongue knew how to stab so keenly, could really be the same individual as mild-mannered, soft-spoken Mr Etheridge, who had seemed as if he could hardly say Bo to a goose!
Her ladyship seemed to hesitate for a moment or two; then she said: ‘I will see you again to-morrow—when you are alone,’ with a little vindictive glance at the impassive Colonel Woodruffe.
‘I shall be at your ladyship’s command whenever and wherever may suit you best.’
He crossed to the door, opened it, and made her one of his most stately bows as she walked slowly out, with head erect and eyes that stared straight before her, but with rage and bitter mortification gnawing at her heartstrings.
‘We have still that scoundrel of a Laroche to reckon with,’ said Sir William quietly to the colonel as he shut the door upon her ladyship.