"Your letter is a forgery. You have no proof. I won't, I won't, I won't give him up!" she repeated, with the impotent iteration of an angry child.
Anne pointed disdainfully to the letter that she held. "Here is his pledged and written word," she said. "While I live, you will never be his wife."
"I shall be his wife the day after the race. I am going to him in London--to warn him against You!"
"You will find me in London, before you--with this in my hand. Do you know his writing?"
She held up the letter, open. Mrs. Glenarm's hand flew out with the stealthy rapidity of a cat's paw, to seize and destroy it. Quick as she was, her rival was quicker still. For an instant they faced each other breathless--one with the letter held behind her; one with her hand still stretched out.
At the same moment--before a word more had passed between them--the glass door opened; and Julius Delamayn appeared in the room.
He addressed himself to Anne.
"We decided, on the terrace," he said, quietly, "that you should speak to Mrs. Glenarm, if Mrs. Glenarm wished it. Do you think it desirable that the interview should be continued any longer?"
Anne's head drooped on her breast. The fiery anger in her was quenched in an instant.
"I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn," she answered. "But I have no right to plead that." She looked up at him for a moment. The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks. She bent her head again, and hid them from him. "The only atonement I can make," she said, "is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house."
In silence, she turned away to the door. In silence, Julius Delamayn paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her. She went out.
Mrs. Glenarm's indignation--suspended for the moment--transferred itself to Julius.
"If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval," she said, haughtily, "I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her example, and to leave your house."
"I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm. If she has presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I beg you to accept my apologies. At the same time, I may venture to add, in defense of my conduct, that I thought her--and think her still--a woman to be pitied more than to be blamed."
"To be pitied did you say?" asked Mrs. Glenarm, doubtful whether her ears had not deceived her.
"To be pitied," repeated Julius.
"You may find it convenient, Mr. Delamayn, to forget what your brother has told us about that person. I happen to remember it."
"So do I, Mrs. Glenarm. But, with my experience of Geoffrey--" He hesitated, and ran his fingers nervously over the strings of his violin.
"You don't believe him?" said Mrs. Glenarm.
Julius declined to admit that he doubted his brother's word, to the lady who was about to become his brother's wife.
"I don't quite go that length," he said. "I find it difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey has told us, with Miss Silvester's manner and appearance--"
"Her appearance!" cried Mrs. Glenarm, in a transport of astonishment and disgust. "Her appearance! Oh, the men! I beg your pardon--I ought to have remembered that there is no accounting for tastes. Go on--pray go on!"
"Shall we compose ourselves with a little music?" suggested Julius.
"I particularly request you will go on," answered Mrs. Glenarm, emphatically. "You find it 'impossible to reconcile'--"
"I said 'difficult.' "
"Oh, very well. Difficult to reconcile what Geoffrey told us, with Miss Silvester's manner and appearance. What next? You had something else to say, when I was so rude as to interrupt you. What was it?"
"Only this," said Julius. "I don't find it easy to understand Sir Patrick Lundie's conduct in permitting Mr. Brinkworth to commit bigamy with his niece."
"Wait a minute! The marriage of that horrible woman to Mr. Brinkworth was a private marriage. Of course, Sir Patrick knew nothing about it!"
Julius owned that this might be possible, and made a second attempt to lead the angry lady back to the piano. Useless, once more! Though she shrank from confessing it to herself, Mrs. Glenarm's belief in the genuineness of her lover's defense had been shaken. The tone taken by Julius--moderate as it was--revived the first startling suspicion of the credibility of Geoffrey's statement which Anne's language and conduct had forced on Mrs. Glenarm. She dropped into the nearest chair, and put her handkerchief to her eyes. "You always hated poor Geoffrey," she said, with a burst of tears. "And now you're defaming him to me!"
Julius managed her admirably. On the point of answering her seriously, he checked himself. "I always hated poor Geoffrey," he repeated, with a smile. "You ought to be the last person to say that, Mrs. Glenarm! I brought him all the way from London expressly to introduce him to you."
"Then I wish you had left him in London!" retorted Mrs. Glenarm, shifting suddenly from tears to temper. "I was a happy woman before I met your brother. I can't give him up!" she burst out, shifting back again from temper to tears. "I don't care if he has deceived me. I won't let another woman have him! I will be his wife!" She threw herself theatrically on her knees before Julius. "Oh, do help me to find out the truth!" she said. "Oh, Julius, pity me! I am so fond of him!"
There was genuine distress in her face, there was true feeling in her voice. Who would have believed that there were reserves of merciless insolence and heartless cruelty in this woman--and that they had been lavishly poured out on a fallen sister not five minutes since?
"I will do all I can," said Julius, raising her. "Let us talk of it when you are more composed. Try a little music," he repeated, "just to quiet your nerves."
"Would you like me to play?" asked Mrs. Glenarm, becoming a model of feminine docility at a moment's notice.
Julius opened the Sonatas of Mozart, and shouldered his violin.
"Let's try the Fifteenth," he said, placing Mrs. Glenarm at the piano. "We will begin with the Adagio. If ever there was divine music written by mortal man, there it is!"
They began. At the third bar Mrs. Glenarm dropped a note--and the bow of Julius paused shuddering on the strings.
"I can't play!" she said. "I am so agitated; I am so anxious. How am I to find out whether that wretch is really married or not? Who can I ask? I can't go to Geoffrey in London--the trainers won't let me see him. I can't appeal to Mr. Brinkworth himself--I am not even acquainted with him. Who else is there? Do think, and tell me!"
There was but one chance of making her return to the Adagio--the chance of hitting on a suggestion which would satisfy and quiet her. Julius laid his violin on the piano, and considered the question before him carefully.
"There are the witnesses," he said. "If Geoffrey's story is to be depended on, the landlady and the waiter at the inn can speak to the facts."
"Low people!" objected Mrs. Glenarm. "People I don't know. People who might take advantage of my situation, and be insolent to me."
Julius considered once more; and made another suggestion. With the fatal ingenuity of innocence, he hit on the idea of referring Mrs. Glenarm to no less a person than Lady Lundie herself!
"There is our good friend at Windygates," he said. "Some whisper of the matter may have reached Lady Lundie's ears. It may be a little awkward to call on her (if she has heard any thing) at the time of a serious family disaster. You are the best judge of that, however. All I can do is to throw out the notion. Windygates isn't very far off--and something might come of it. What do you think?"
Something might come of it! Let it be remembered that Lady Lundie had been left entirely in the dark--that she had written to Sir Patrick in a tone which plainly showed that her self-esteem was wounded and her suspicion roused--and that her first intimation of the serious dilemma in which Arnold Brinkworth stood was now likely, thanks to Julius Delamayn, to reach her from the lips of a mere acquaintance.