The sound of the voices within the room was low at first, but afterwards grew louder. Then it was mingled with impatient tappings as of a stick on the floor, and Mary’s voice--he could trace both voices, they were so different, even in the murmur of talk at the beginning--took an expostulatory tone.
“Assure me nothing. Let him come in, let him come in: and I will let him know what I think of him.”
It was certainly her voice; but in all his recollection he had never heard this tone in it. He waited listening, half amused, half sad, beginning to wonder more and more. At last he yielded to a sudden impulse, and went straight forward to the half-opened door.
There he stood for a moment arrested, struck dumb. And they, too, struck by the sound of the man’s foot, so different from their own velvet steps, turned round and looked at him. Was that Anna? His heart, which had been beating so high, stopped short, and seemed to drop, drop into some unknown depths. “Oh yes, I see,” he said to himself. “I see, I see. She is as handsome as ever----” But was that Anna? He stood on the threshold of this room, which was sacred to her, holding his breath.
Then the strange old woman, who was Anna, beckoned to him imperiously with her hand.
“Come in, come in,” she said, “whoever you are, who are using a name---- Come in. I do not know if you are aware that Mr Leonard Crosthwaite, whose name you are assuming----” Here she stopped and fixed two great, brilliant, dark eyes upon him, opened to their full width, glowing like angry stars. She made a pause of about a minute long, which seemed to the two others like an hour. Then she dropped her voice with a careless inflection, as if after that gaze she disdained the risk she was running--“died,” she added indifferently, but pausing on the word--“at least twenty years ago.”
“He did not die, Anna, since I am here,” said the stranger.
It was impossible to speak to her, even now, without some tenderness getting into his voice.
“Do not venture to speak to me, sir, by my Christian name. Do you know there is a punishment for impostors? Oh, you think perhaps you know just how far you can go without infringing the law. Perhaps you think, too, that we are alone here, and you can frighten us. But that is a mistake. There is a butler, a strong man, whom I can summon in a moment with this bell, and there is my nephew. Any attempt at bullying or extortion will be useless here.”