They stood regarding each other in silence, the man puzzled by her swarthy, sullen face, the girl conscious of a rush of embittered memories. It was as though something out of the past had risen up before her, something ignorant and unwelcome that might blunder any moment against her sensitive reserve.
“I trust that Sir Lionel is hearty as ever?”
She seized the handle of the door and shook it.
“I wonder where that fool—Miles—”
“Pardon me, shall I shout?”
Barbara kept one shoulder turned toward him, her face, bleak and white, reflected in the glass panel of the door.
“Oh—at last!”
There was the sound of a key turning in a lock. She pushed past the man as he opened the door, leaving John Gore wondering what manner of mischief three years had made in a girl’s temper.
In the parlor, with its panelling, its massive furniture, and great fireplace filled with blue Dutch tiles, Anne Purcell and my Lord Gore had been talking for above an hour. My lord was standing at a window in his favorite attitude of philosophic stateliness. The lady’s face had an impatient sharpness of expression that hinted that the man’s sympathy had not sounded the deeps of her unrest.
“I tell you, Nan, that these—these possibilities—leave us where we stood before. The girl may be a little touched in the head. Leave her to Hortense; if she cannot tame her, well, there are other ways.”