He said those extraordinary words like a slow boy saying a hard lesson—his eyes on the ground, his fingers restlessly fastening and unfastening a button on his waistcoat.
Anne left the room. In the passage she was obliged to wait, and support herself against the wall. His unnatural politeness was horrible; his carefully asserted repentance chilled her to the soul with dread. She had never felt—in the time of his fiercest anger and his foulest language—the unutterable horror of him that she felt now.
Hester Dethridge came out, closing the door behind her. She looked attentively at Anne—then wrote on her slate, and held it out, with these words on it:
“Do you believe him?”
Anne pushed the slate away, and ran up stairs. She fastened the door—and sank into a chair.
“He is plotting something against me,” she said to herself. “What?”
A sickening, physical sense of dread—entirely new in her experience of herself—made her shrink from pursuing the question. The sinking at her heart turned her faint. She went to get the air at the open window.
At the same moment there was a ring at the gate bell. Suspicious of any thing and every thing, she felt a sudden distrust of letting herself be seen. She drew back behind the curtain and looked out.
A man-servant, in livery, was let in. He had a letter in his hand. He said to the girl as he passed Anne’s window, “I come from Lady Holchester; I must see Mr. Delamayn instantly.”
They went in. There was an interval. The footman reappeared, leaving the place. There was another interval. Then there came a knock at the door. Anne hesitated. The knock was repeated, and the dumb murmuring of Hester Dethridge was heard outside. Anne opened the door.