'It is impossible,' she murmured to herself, stretching out her hand for a cigarette.
There was a knock at the door. Her maid came softly in--an elderly woman in prim black, softly-shod and with the art of moving noiselessly. She carried a card in her hand, which she presented to her mistress.
'Madame,' she announced, 'this gentleman desires the favour of a word with you.'
'You know so well, Marie,' she complained, 'that I receive here only those who need send no card. Give him my address, if it is a gentleman from the Press.'
'I thought madame would prefer to see this gentleman,' the maid said quietly.
Still with a queer reluctance, Félanie took the card into her white fingers. Before she glanced at it she knew very well what name she would find written there, and she hated the knowledge. The black letters stared up at her--
_Mr. Ambrose Lavendale, 17 Sackville Street._
Félanie turned her head slowly and looked upwards at her maid. The woman's face, however, was blank.
'The gentleman is doubtless known to Mr. Wiltshaw,' the latter continued. 'He secured the entrée here without difficulty. He waits now in the passage.'
'You can show him in,' her mistress ordered.
There were a few seconds during which another woman looked into that gaily-hung mirror, and another reflection appeared there. The mouth was no longer seductive, but grim. The eyes were no longer insolent, half challenging conquest, half promising tenderness, but seemed, indeed, to have receded a little, to be filled with the shrinking light of fear. The transition was extraordinary and complete. Here sat a terrified woman, face to face with some evil thing!
Then there came a knock at the door. As with the touch of her fingers upon the switch the gloom of the room was changed into brilliant light, so Félanie almost miraculously recovered herself. She swung round in her dainty revolving chair. Her lips, even, fell naturally and easily into the lines of her most seductive smile. What fear there was at the woman's heart showed itself no longer in her face.
'Monsieur Lavendale--Monsieur Ambrose Lavendale, is it not?' she added, with a momentary glance at the card. 'You wish to see me?
Lavendale came a little further into the room and bowed. At a glance from her mistress, the maid softly withdrew, closing the door. In his severely simple evening clothes, Lavendale seemed in that little room to be taller even than his six feet two. Félanie, who had risen to her feet, felt herself suddenly dominated.