"
Lady Casterley answered coldly:
"To let you and your mother know of this woman's most unselfish
behaviour; to put you on the 'qui vive' for what Eustace may do now;
to give you a chance to make up for your folly. Moreover to warn you
against----" she paused.
"Yes?"
"Let me----" interrupted Lord Dennis.
"No, Uncle Dennis, let Granny take her shoe!"
She had withdrawn against the wall, tall, and as it were, formidable,
with her head up. Lady Casterley remained silent.
"Have you got it ready?" cried Barbara: "Unfortunately he's flown!"
A voice said:
"Lord Miltoun."
He had come in quietly and quickly, preceding the announcement, and
stood almost touching that little group at the window before they caught
sight of him. His face had the rather ghastly look of sunburnt faces
from which emotion has driven the blood; and his eyes, always so much
the most living part of him, were full of such stabbing anger, that
involuntarily they all looked down.
"I want to speak to you alone," he said to Lady Casterley.
Visibly, for perhaps the first time in her life, that indomitable little
figure flinched. Lord Dennis drew Barbara away, but at the door he
whispered:
"Stay here quietly, Babs; I don't like the look of this."
Unnoticed, Barbara remained hovering.
The two voices, low, and so far off in the long white room, were
uncannily distinct, emotion charging each word with preternatural power
of penetration; and every movement of the speakers had to the girl's
excited eyes a weird precision, as of little figures she had once
seen at a Paris puppet show.
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