The blood flew up into her face, dyeing it crimson.
‘What? what? Do you disbelieve me?’ she cried. ‘How dare you, I say?’
She shook his arm. Her voice was so loud that he feared it might be overheard by some other inmate of the house. He felt almost distracted. He disengaged himself and turned to the wall, his hand over his face. The pain of the moment was so intolerable. Lady Eliza’s wrath dropped suddenly and fell from her, leaving her standing dumb, for there was something in the look of Fullarton’s bowed shoulders that struck her in the very centre of her heart. When she should have been silent she had spoken, and now, when she would have given worlds to speak, she could not.
He turned slowly and they looked at each other. The fire had spurted up and each could see the other’s face. His expression was one of physical suffering. He opened the door and went out.
He knew his way in every corner of Morphie, and he went, as he had often done, through the passage by which she had entered and passed by the servants’ offices into the stable-yard. He was so much preoccupied that he did not hear her footsteps behind him and he walked out, unconscious that she followed. In the middle of the yard stood a weeping-ash on a plot of grass, and she hurried round the tree and into an outbuilding connected with the stable. She entered and saw his horse standing on the pillar-rein, the white blaze on his face distinct in the dark. The stablemen were indoors. She slipped the rings and led him out of the place on to the cobble-stones.
Robert was standing bareheaded in the yard. He took up the rein mechanically without looking at her, and put his foot in the stirrup iron. As he was about to turn, she laid hold of the animal’s mane.
‘Lady Eliza!’ he exclaimed, staring down through the dusk.
‘You have left your hat, Fullarton,’ she said. ‘I will go in and fetch it.’
Before he could prevent her, she had vanished into the house. He sat for a moment in his saddle, for there was no one to take the horse; but he followed her to the door, and dismounted there. In a couple of minutes she returned with the hat.
‘Thank you—thank you,’ he said; ‘you should not have done such a thing.’