Perhaps the actress was uppermost in Susan, or perhaps an odd impulse of loyalty to the dead man whose ring she wore carried her out of herself. Her heart was hot against the woman who had played fast and loose with him, and it taught her how one who belonged to Barnaby would have faced this moment. His wife would not be a coward, would not sit, a piteous listener, in the background; she had his memory to uphold. And so she found herself standing up, confronting the stranger in a proud silence that was more eloquent than reproach. Slowly, without a word, she moved onwards to leave the room.
"Gad!" said Rackham, under his breath. He liked that.
Something like awe had smitten Julia. She remained a moment transfixed, staring after her, all exclamation hushed on her reckless lips. Then, all at once, she followed.
"Tell me who you are," she panted hysterically. "It's all nonsense, isn't it?--It's a sham?"
Lady Henrietta was watching the scene from her sofa, and so was Rackham, standing with his back to the fire. They were both far off. It was a swift and dramatic minute.
"His mother hates me," said Julia, half to herself; her hold tightened on the girl's arm. "She's capable of anything. She--What colour were his eyes?"
The question was flung at her without warning. But a man's face stood out distinct in the girl's imagination, haunting her with a clearness none of these other faces had; smiling whimsically down from his picture all this while she was letting people proclaim her his.... Somehow she was defending him, covering his hurt.
The other woman's hand dropped. She let her go.
Susan let the velvet hangings fall heavily behind her as she came through. A kind of wonder at herself possessed her, and her knees trembled. Mechanically she traversed the hall, and began to climb the wide staircase, leaning a little as she went, on the solid oak balustrade.
On the first landing a window faced the stair, and right and left ran corridors, interminable, and equally mysterious to the stranger, who was, in a manner, lost in this unknown house. She sank down on the window-seat, set deep in the thickness of the wall.
Outside, the sky was dark with a strange red, as of furnaces under the horizon, glimmering in the west. She could just distinguish the jutting corner of the more antique part of the house, built as it was in different centuries, bit by bit. That side was strangely ornamented with mediæval figures--the images of ancient warriors, all battered and weather-stained. And the land they had won was quiet, lying half asleep; only the trees still restless as night came on.