Seized by an unaccountable impulse, she had put her foot to the floor, and crossed the wide carpet to the fireplace, where the visitor had gone from her side. The fire had fallen in, flaring high in a quivering blaze, and by its light she had seen that over the chimney-piece hung the picture of a man. Instinct had told her who it was, and she stared at him, fascinated.
The other woman had left her the wrong photograph in her hurry. This was no weak boy with a foolish mouth, bundled over-seas by his people. This was a man with a steady face that betrayed nothing of himself, and eyes that held her startled gaze. Blue eyes, audacious and understanding. Her heart beat strangely. For this must be Barnaby the reckless, who had married a wife and got himself killed ... and she, poor fool, was calling herself his widow.
She clung to the chimney-piece, shivering with excitement, a quaint, slight figure in her white night-dress.
"I'll hurt nobody.... I'll hurt nobody!" she was explaining to him in an imploring whisper; and it seemed to her that the man in the picture smiled.
"--There, give it back to me," said Lady Henrietta jealously, and her voice scattered mists of imagination. "You don't think I'm crazy, do you? You know why it is I can't stop knitting his stockings.--We'll not talk about him, Susan. You and I have each our own memories, and we can't share them.--I don't want yours. But we'll fight for him together; since he belongs to us."
"I've not told anybody about you yet," she said. "I've been hugging the secret for purposes of my own. I am a wicked woman, Susan. Upon my honour, if you hadn't existed, I'd have been obliged to invent you. If you hadn't come to me, I'd have searched the world for an imitation, from end to end. How he would laugh at me!--But we'll not talk about him--we couldn't bear it. Only we'll fight for him, as I said. We'll not let his enemies triumph and pretend that they broke his heart."
Her voice was quicker, charged with a passionate haste that hurried the words out before she could close her lips.
"You little pale thing," she said. "I am not a kissing woman ... but ... oh, you don't know what you are to me. Wait. I'll make you understand. There's a creature here who behaved shamefully to my boy ... to _him_. And now he is dead she goes about boasting, claiming him as her victim, hinting to all who will listen that he killed himself for love of her. It's not true.... You'll teach them it is not true!"