"It is true," she asserted feverishly. "You don't know him as I do. Oh no, he has never been hard to me. But he could be hard. And he wouldn't forgive me--if he thought I had been hiding anything. Bertie, Bertie, you won't do it? Say you won't do it!"
"I do nothing without your consent," Bertrand answered quietly. "But I think that it is a mistake. I think--"
"Oh, thank you!" she broke in earnestly. "I know I can rely upon you to keep your word. I can, can't I?"
He smiled at a question which he would have borne from no other. "Until death, Christine," he said.
Her hands fell away from his arm. She was shaking all over. "I know I'm foolish," she said. "I can't help it. I was made so. And when Trevor begins to ask questions--" She broke off nervously. "What is that?"
A leisurely footfall sounded in the hall, a quiet hand pressed the electric switch by the door, and the room was flooded with light.
"Oh, don't!" Chris cried out sharply. "Don't!"
She put her hands over her face as if dazzled, and so stood quivering.
"What is it?" Mordaunt asked. "Did I startle you?"
He came to her. He drew her hands gently down. But she almost cowered before him, and he let her go.
"I think that she is tired," Bertrand said, his voice very low.
"Is that all?" Mordaunt asked, looking at him.
The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders, and made no reply. But Chris turned at the question, turned and confronted her husband with wide, scared eyes.
"Yes, I am tired," she said, speaking jerkily, breathlessly. "But--but I was startled too. I--I thought I heard Cinders--barking."
It was the first time she had ever deliberately lied to him, and her eyes met his full as she did it in desperate self-defence.
He looked at her very steadily for the space of several seconds after she had spoken, and in the silence Bertrand's hands clenched hard.
Quietly at length Mordaunt turned round to him. "Don't let me interrupt you," he said. "You were playing, weren't you? Chris and I are good listeners."
He took his wife's cold hand, and drew her to the sofa; and Bertrand, seeing there was nothing else to be done, turned back to the piano and resumed his playing.
Not another word was spoken by any of them until Noel came upon the scene, and airily dispelled the silence before he was aware of it.