“I have no doubt that curiosity is my besetting sin,” answered Miss Ley, “but not indiscretion. Only fools discuss the concrete; the intelligent are more concerned with the abstract.”
“D’you know that Paul’s mother would give half her fortune to know that I was down here with a man? Oh, how glad she’d be of the chance of hounding me down! For God’s sake promise that you’ll never say a word. You don’t want to ruin me, do you?”
“I promise faithfully.”
Mrs. Castillyon gave a sigh of relief that was half a sob of pain. The room was empty except for the waiter clearing away, but she thought he watched suspiciously.
“But now I’m in your power, too,” she groaned. “I wish to God I’d never come here. Why doesn’t that man go away. I feel I could scream at the top of my voice.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” answered Miss Ley quietly.
Valuing nothing so much as self-restraint, she observed Mrs. Castillyon with a certain scorn, for this pitiful exhibition of shame and terror somewhat disgusted her. None was more indifferent to convention than herself, and the marriage tie especially excited her ridicule, but she despised entirely those who disregarded the by-laws of society, yet lacked courage to suffer the results of their boldness: to seek the good opinion of the world, and yet secretly to act counter to its idea of decorum, was a very contemptible hypocrisy. Mrs. Castillyon, divining the sense of Miss Ley’s scrutiny, watched anxiously.
“You must utterly despise me,” she moaned.
“Don’t you think you’d better come back to London with me to-night,” answered Miss Ley, fixing on the terrified woman her cold, stern gray eyes.
Mrs. Castillyon’s buoyant sprightliness had completely disappeared, and she sat before the elder woman haggard and white, like a guilty prisoner before his judge. But at this proposition a faint blush came to her cheeks, and a look of piteous anguish turned down the corners of her mouth.