A longing to be incautious, to do something startling, desperate, came to her.
It was evident that Mrs. Ulford had been complaining to Sir Donald about his son’s conduct. With whom? Lady Holme could not doubt that it was with herself. She had read, with one glance at the fluttering pink eyelids, the story of the Leo Ulford’s _menage_. Now, she was not preoccupied with any regret for her own cruelty or for another woman’s misery. The egoism spoken of by Carey was not dead in her yet, but very much alive. As she sat in the corner of the brougham, pressing herself against the padded wall, she was angry for herself, pitiful for herself. And she was jealous--horribly jealous. That woke up her imagination, all the intensity of her. Where was Fritz to-night? She did not know. Suddenly the dense ignorance in which every human being lives, and must live to the end of time, towered above her like a figure in a nightmare. What do we know, what can we ever know of each other? In each human being dwells the most terrible, the most ruthless power that exists--the power of silence.
Fritz had that power; stupid, blundering, self-contented Fritz.
She pulled the check-string and gave the order, “Home!”
In her present condition she felt unable to go into Society.
When she got to Cadogan Square she said to the footman who opened the door:
“Did he say what time he would be in to-night?”
“His lordship told Mr. Lucas not to wait up.”
It seemed to Lady Holme as if there were a significant, even a slightly mocking, sound in the footman’s voice. She stared at him. He was a thin, swarthy young man, with lantern jaws and a very long, pale chin. When she looked at him he dropped his eyes.
“Bring me some lemonade to the drawing-room in ten minutes,” she said.
“In ten minutes, not before. Turn on all the lights in the drawing-room.”
The man went before her up the staircase, turned on the lights, stood aside to let her pass and then went softly down. Lady Holme rang for Josephine.
“Take my cloak and then go to bed,” she said.
Josephine took the cloak and went out, shutting the door.
“Ten minutes!” Lady Holme said to herself.
She sat down on the sofa on which she had sat for a moment alone after her song at the dinner-party, the song murdered by Miss Filberte. The empty, brilliantly-lit rooms seemed unusually large. She glanced round them with inward-looking eyes. Here she was at midnight sitting quite alone in her own house. And she wished to do something decisive, startling as the cannon shot sometimes fired from a ship to disperse a fog wreath. That was the reason why she had told the footman to come in ten minutes. She thought that in ten minutes she might make up her mind. If she decided upon doing something that required an emissary the man would be there.