“The best way to defeat Captain Melun's scheme, so far as I am concerned,” she urged, “is to release me.”
But at that Mme. Estelle leaped to her feet again and her face was hideous in its cunning.
“Ah! not that,” she cried, “not that! If I distrust him, I distrust you still more. Your pretty face may look sad and sorrowful, and you may declare to me that you will never consent; but I will wait and see. I'll wait until Melun returns and confront you with him. Then perhaps I shall learn the real truth.”
Kathleen made a little despairing gesture with her hands; argument, she saw, would be useless.
Gathering herself together, Madame blundered, half blind with tears, out of the room, and Kathleen with a sinking heart heard the bolts drawn again.
All through the day Madame sat brooding, sending Kathleen's lunch and tea up to her by Crow.
All the evening she still sat and brooded, until as eleven o'clock drew near and there were still no signs of the captain she had worked herself up into a hysteria of rage.
Twelve o'clock struck, and still the captain was absent. Another half-hour dragged slowly by, and then she heard his car grating its way up the hill-side.
She was at the door to meet him, and would have plunged straightway into the matter which absorbed her but for the sight of his face.
It was haggard and pale as death. His eyes were blazing in their sockets, and his straggling hair lent him altogether a distraught and terrifying aspect.