He was taken up to the sitting-room, introduced by the maid, and left just inside the door, as on the occasion of his first visit. But now he knew the way about the room.
“In the house to-day, my lady?” he said, “I like the garden-house better.”
“And you want your own way, as usual?” she asked.
“You say that as though you hated me,” he said, stopping dead.
“What a sensitive ear you have,” she replied cruelly. “I do.”
There was a finality about this pronouncement which caused him to take it with the utmost seriousness. Her tones were chill and bloodless and dead, and they disquieted him, so much that he advanced not another step, but remained readjusting his mood, which had been eager, to one of defence. He was horribly startled. It was fortunate for him that he could not see her; she had retreated from him as far as the size of the room would allow, behind the sofa, where she stood shivering as though with cold, her eyes fixed and unblinking, her hand laid upon her loose garment to hold it close at the throat, and all her muscles gathered ready for swift escape at any sign of advance on his part.
“I should not have sent for you,” she said, “but I knew you could not read a letter if I wrote you one, and I did not care to send you a message throughany of my servants. I don’t want to keep you long, as I only want to tell you that I am leaving for London to-morrow and shall not be seeing you again. I could certainly have sent you a message to tell you that. But I wanted to tell you my reason myself.”
She had prepared beforehand what she intended to say, for her safeguard lay in frigidity of speech, and to achieve that she must maintain frigidity of feeling. That had been easy before he came; but when she saw him her cold anger had been shaken, her contempt had wavered beneath a return of her old respect, and her audacity in risking danger had revived. “I wanted to tell you my reason,” she resumed, “but before doing so I must own that you had completely taken me in. I thought I knew you well, but I knew only that part of you which you were willing that I should know. I thought I had made in you the discovery of something really rather remarkable. I was rather pleased with myself over it. I know now that I have been stupidly mistaken. Your elaborate fraud deceived me as being a genuine thing....”
“I can see you have learnt all this by heart,” he interrupted. She flamed up no less at his perspicacity than at his rudeness.
“Very well,” she cried, “I’ll drop my stilted phrases. I did prepare them, but they are true, for all that. I have found you out. You interested me, you even impressed me,—I hate you for it. You’re nothing but a sham and a coward.”
“It’s not true,” said Silas, growing very pale.
“It’s so true,” she said quickly, “that the words I’ve just used to you are the very words you have always most dreaded hearing. A sham and a coward. You’re such a coward that there have been moments when you were glad you were blind, because that saved you from dangers other men were expected to undertake. You were quite safe to talk about danger; your blindness sheltered you, and words couldn’t possibly hurt. Am I not speaking the truth? Your blindness has been your best friend, as well as your worst enemy,—your worst enemy, because it favoured your horrible imagination, and provided a darkness that you peopled with shapes; your best friend, because all the time it preserved you from having to practise what you preached. See how I know you now. I suppose it amused you to deceive me, to see just how far you could go, and sometimes when you thought you’d put your foot an inch over the line of my credulity you drew it back very skilfully.Now I have simply found you out for what you are. I have learnt the story of the fire two nights ago.”
“Nan!” exclaimed Silas, in a burst of fury.
“Not at all; I have seen Hambley. I don’t wish to make any mystery. He came to see me this morning, whining and snivelling, and told me the whole story: how you had lost your head, how you had gibbered with fright—gibbered was the word he used—he says you went like this,” and she imitated a man in the extremity of terror, working her mouth, distending her eyes and nostrils, and clacking her fingers; “he was not pretty to watch, Dene. Then he told me how you had dragged him in and beaten him for looking in through your window; he was quite shrewd enough to see that you seized upon the pretext of beating him merely as a relief to your nerves, that fright had exasperated. He came to me in order to be revenged on you, and also, I think, because he wanted to whimper to some one. He says you went upon your knees to young Morgan, and that Morgan was laughing at you, though you didn’t know it, and that even your sister-in-law smiled more than once behind her hand. Well, that’s the picture I carry away of you, Dene. You can hardlybe surprised that I regret the kindness I have shown to you. I have made a great mistake which I shall know better than to repeat in the future.” She hardened herself, she mentally insisted on her relief at escaping from a situation which she had felt to be getting beyond her control. There were many incidents she remembered with discomfort, and her husband had been very peremptory, when, the anonymous letter in his hand, he had come to her, “If I thought there was any truth in these revolting hints ...” yes, decidedly, Hambley’s revelations had been very opportune as an excuse for getting rid of Silas. She thought, on the whole, she had manœuvred her opportunities ably.
“Hambley shall pay for this.”
“Hambley must take care of himself,” she replied, “I have no doubt that you will invent some form of revenge which will interest you very much as a new experiment, and you will improve it and refine it and fiddle over it, like some magician preparing a brew. I should never, at any moment, have had any doubts as to that. I should like you to understand that I always knew you for cruel, unscrupulous, and without heart or conscience; I thought you a ruthless man, but where I went wrong was in notthinking you despicable. I could have respected you for thorough-going villainy,—yes, I thought there was a certain largeness of gesture about your discontent,—but I have only contempt for the sham.”
Her voice had grown still more cold and level; it licked sharply round his vanity, and as ever, his instinct flew to physical violence. He snarled, and moved in her direction, knocking over a small table, but she dodged him.
“Keep quiet, Dene,” she said, in the same glacial tone, “we really cannot play this ridiculous game of blindman’s buff.”