“'Fore God, I am no coward,” she repeated, and with her delicate head erect she went out and down the stairs and entered the dining-room.
There she found Sir Oliver and Lady Blount sitting at a neglected breakfast. The old faces strove pitifully to smile. Stella kissed them in turn, and with her hand lingering on the old man's arm, she gave him Herold's letter.
“Is it in the newspapers?” she asked.
“What, what, my dear?” said Sir Oliver, adjusting his glasses on his nose with fumbling fingers.
She looked from one to the other. Then her eyes fell on the morning papers lying on the table. They were folded so that a great head-line stared hideously.
“Oh, darling, don't read it—for Heaven's sake do n't read it,” cried Lady Blount, clutching the nearer newspaper.
But Stella took up the other. “I must, dearest,” she said very gently. “Walter has written to me; but he could not tell me everything.”
She moved to the window that overlooked the pleasant garden, and with steady eyes read the vulgar and soul-withering report, while the two old people, head to head, puzzled out Herold's scrawl.
When she had finished, she laid the paper quietly at the foot of the table and came and stood between them, revolted by the callous publication of names, almost physically sickened by the realistic picture of the scene, her head whirling. She caught hold of the back of Sir Oliver's chair.
“The newspaper lies,” she said, “but it does n't know any better. Walter tells us why she did it.”