Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/303

 on a white marble centre table, indicating occupation for the lady during his absence; and to humour him Terry sat down on the alleged easy-chair which he pulled into place. The gas lights in a huge gilt chandelier throbbed over her head, blazing in white globes; and a mirror in a gilt frame, over a hideously draped mantel, reflected the inappropriately graceful figure of the woman, as she subsided into the arm-chair by the table. Terry could observe her own image in this glass, as she sat mechanically turning the pages of an old Illustrated London News, and the crude overhead light was singularly unbecoming. It threw heavy shadows, and made hollows and lines where none existed. "I look as if I were dying," she said to herself; and then, glancing down at the open page, she started to see a portrait of Lady Hereward, as she had been many years ago, when Terry knew her first.

Involuntarily she drew her breath in sharply; and a sound at the door caused her to look up, as if guiltily. "Ian!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. As she rose, an inadvertent push sent the newspaper off the table to the floor. It fell as she had opened it. Both stooped confusedly to pick it up, and Sir Ian saw his wife's picture.

"Oh, God, Terry!" he cried out, as he had cried to her that first day, when she had gone to his house and asked for the woman who lay dead in the woods.

She snatched the paper from him. "It opened