“You had better not come to the court to-morrow, if you don’t feel up to it,” said Gerard.
“Oh, I should go if I were dying!” said Irene. “It is the least thing we can do—go and cheer and keep the brave heart in him. For with all your efforts, dearest, you have been able to do nothing.”
“There was nothing to be done. I did what I could. Couldn’t even get hold of your famous photograph. He must have destroyed that too. So I couldn’t trace the original.”
That cold, cruel and exquisitely chiselled face, whose likeness she had seen in Hugh’s rooms, had persistently assumed the identity of the woman for whose sake he was maintaining this silence. Even when she doubted the probability of her conjecture, the mysterious woman gradually revealed herself as the possessor of those ophidian eyes. They haunted her night and day. At last she doubted no longer. That was the woman; she had the face of one who could well see the man that loved her die before her eyes. As a forlorn hope Irene had set Gerard upon the track of this photograph. But it had disappeared from Hugh’s rooms. The disappearance, however, confirmed her certainty.
There was a silence. Gerard went on with his dinner with the steadiness of a big-framed man who must eat. Irene pressed her hands over her burning eyeballs and leant forward on the table. She was suffering greatly.
“Will you be able to bear it—if the worst comes?” she asked, after a while.
“The worst hasn’t come yet,” he replied, “so it’s no good talking about it.”
His brow clouded. There was a deep note in his wife’s voice that troubled him. She noticed the shadow.
“I must not pain you, Gerard. I have only known Hugh for a few years. He has been your friend all your life. I can’t feel it all as you do.”
“We don’t mend matters by dwelling upon them,” he said. “Besides—if there really is a woman——”