She had been holding the fan before her face while he spoke. Now she lowered it and looked at him. Her face was paler than ever, paler than death, if that be possible, but in her eyes there shone a light like the light of a flame.
“Why not?” he answered savagely. “I wonder that you think it necessary to ask such a question, but as you do I will tell you why. Because Ida is the lady whom I am going to marry, and I do not choose that she should associate with a woman who is what you are.”
“_Ah!_” she said again, “I understand now.”
At that moment a diversion occurred. The drawing-room looked on to the garden, and at the end of the garden was a door which opened into another street.
Through this door had come Colonel Quaritch accompanied by Mr. Quest, the former with his gun under his arm. They walked up the garden and were almost at the French window when Edward Cossey saw them. “Control yourself,” he said in a low voice, “here is your husband.”
Mr. Quest advanced and knocked at the window, which his wife opened. When he saw Edward Cossey he hesitated a little, then nodded to him, while the Colonel came forward, and placing his gun by the wall entered the room, shook hands with Mrs. Quest, and bowed coldly to Edward Cossey.
“I met the Colonel, Belle,” said Mr. Quest, “coming here with the benevolent intention of giving you some snipe, so I brought him up by the short way.”
“That is very kind of you, Colonel Quaritch,” said she with a sweet smile (for she had the sweetest smile imaginable).
He looked at her. There was something about her face which attracted his attention, something unusual.
“You,” he said bluntly, for they were out of hearing of the other two. “If I were poetically minded I should say that you looked like the Tragic Muse.”
“Do I?” she answered, laughing. “Well, that is curious, because I feel like Comedy herself.”
“There’s something wrong with that woman,” thought the Colonel to himself as he extracted two couple of snipe from his capacious coat tails. “I wonder what it is.”
Just then Mr. Quest and Edward Cossey passed out into the garden talking.
“Here are the snipe, Mrs. Quest,” he said. “I have had rather good luck. I killed four couple and missed two couple more; but then I had a new gun, and one can never shoot so well with a new gun.”