“You got a bit start of me, Fibby!” she said grimly, “but no matter. The old woman will be a match for you before she’s done!”
Mrs. Elles slid her wrist out of Mortimer’s grasp, which tightened disagreeably when he gathered her intention of escape.
“No violence, please, Mortimer,” she said stagily. “I almost think I will leave you to discuss me with Aunt Poynder!”
She left the room with no signs of unseemly haste, delighted to feel the grasp of her husband’s fingers literally smarting on her arm. Cruelty! She had heard of that.
She went straight upstairs to her own room and locked herself in. It had been a sudden and brilliant inspiration of hers to leave them. She wanted very much to hear what it was that her aunt had to say to her husband, but still more she did want time to think. The ground had been cut beneath her feet. She felt like Alnaschar when his basket of eggs was rudely kicked away from him. A completely new plan of action was imperative, and how could she act when she was so dreadfully in the dark and so puzzled by her husband’s constant allusions to Mrs. Poynder, whom she had not seen since she left Newcastle?
But stay! In her hurried glimpse of Mrs. Poynder she had realized that that lady was wearing a black dress, trimmed with little shining things, as Rivers had called them, and that the black bag that she had slammed down on the table was the one that Rivers had described as belonging to the unknown visitor at the Heather Bell on that summer night that seemed so long ago and was only last night. And the face seen at the window at the very moment when she had fallen into her lover’s arms, for the first and only time! All these things came crowding into her mind; a bewildering vision of what had been rose before her eyes, with the damning significance in ears inimical of all the little foolish foolhardy things she had done in the innocent audacity of her unreturned love—and she realized how she and Rivers had been betrayed!
She must find out how much and what Aunt Poynder had seen before she committed herself by a single word. She must be clever and diplomatic to the full extent of her powers. Her excitement grew as she sat there on the edge of the bed thinking out a plan—many plans, and she bounded to her feet when there came a very ordinary knock at the door.
“Come in!” she cried, forgetting that she had locked it.
There was a furious rattling and “How can I?” came in Mrs. Poynder’s angry voice.
Mrs. Elles had taken her line.