“My master has gone out, my lady.”
“To his club?”
“I believe so, my lady.”
“I will send you with a letter to him. Come back when I ring again.” She turned to me as the man withdrew. “Do you refuse to stay here until the General returns?”
“I shall be happy to see the General, if you will inclose my address in your letter to him.”
Replying in those terms, I wrote the address for the second time. Lady Claudia knew perfectly well, when I gave it to her, that I was going to a respectable house kept by a woman who had nursed me when I was a child.
“One last question,” she said. “Am I to tell the General that it is your intention to marry your groom?”
Her tone stung me into making an answer which I regretted the moment it had passed my lips.
“You can put it more plainly, if you like,” I said. “You can tell the General that it is my intention to marry your son.”
She was near the door, on the point of leaving me. As I spoke, she turned with a ghastly stare of horror—felt about her with her hands as if she was groping in darkness—and dropped on the floor.