“Your husband puts these pearls on your neck, love,” he said, proudly, and paused to look at her. “Now,” he added, with a contemptuous backward glance at Grace, “we may go into the library. She has seen, and she has heard.”
He believed that he had silenced her. He had simply furnished her sharp tongue with a new sting.
“You will hear, and you will see, when my proofs come from Canada,” she retorted. “You will hear that your wife has stolen my name and my character! You will see your wife dismissed from this house!”
Mercy turned on her with an uncontrollable outburst of passion.
“You are mad!” she cried.
Lady Janet caught the electric infection of anger in the air of the room. She, too, turned on Grace. She, too, said it:
“You are mad!”
Horace followed Lady Janet. He was beside himself. He fixed his pitiless eyes on Grace, and echoed the contagious words:
“You are mad!”
She was silenced, she was daunted at last. The treble accusation revealed to her, for the first time, the frightful suspicion to which she had exposed herself. She shrank back with a low cry of horror, and struck against a chair. She would have fallen if Julian had not sprung forward and caught her.