"No haste ... you must do it languidly--go out of the room."
"But my----" (I suppressed "my aunt" with an inward twist of questioning anguish) "----shall I not be asked where I am going and why?"
He said no. Because he would make the others a sign. He thought my sister was too excited to take any notice of my going. "But if she does, I'll tell her you wanted her to go on singing. I shall seem to be coming after you. But I'll stop to explain that we've had an argument about one of the pictures in the hall." He told me what I was to do.
"If, after all, they were to prevent me--what, what then?"
"They won't--they will leave you to me." He said it with a look that stopped the heart.
He fixed his unhappy eyes on mine. "You would never be allowed out of this room alone."
I measured the long room. "If once I got as far as the door I could run."
"----as far as the front door perhaps. You would find it locked. No servant would open it for you."
"I can do it for you," he said, under his breath, and he stood up.
I thought he meant I was to make trial then of that terrible passage to the door. But was it not better to be where Betty was, whatever came--Betty and I together--than Betty alone with those devouring-eyed men, and I with a maniac out in the hall!
He stood in front of me, masking me from the others. "Haven't I made you understand? If you don't leave the room with me, _she_ will leave it with Whitby-Dawson."
He hushed me. "She won't know why--but she'll do it. And she won't come back again. She would probably be on her way to Paris this time to-morrow." He pulled a great cushion up to hide my face. And then he turned and made a feint of getting an illustrated paper off the table. He kept his eye on the others. There was some little commotion, during which Betty had risen. She left the sofa and sat on the piano-stool. She was laughing excitedly.
The man came back to me with the illustrated paper. He sat down closer to me, and held the paper open for a shield. But he held it strangely, with his arm across the picture. The reading part was in French. I had to crane to see over the top--Betty twisting round on the piano-stool, and touching the keys in a provoking way; the two men teasing her to sing.