Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/466

 The minister smiled, with half-guilty satisfaction. His sister had refused Miss Dounay the courtesy of her escort to the study. He suspected that Rose had even refused to look at the visitor again, but having indicated the direction in which the open door stood, had whisked indignantly beyond into her own preserves.

The hour was now something after sunset, and the room was half in gloom. The actress paused inside the door, standing stiffly. Hampstead sat before his desk, his elbows on the arms of his chair, his hands hanging limp, his shoulders drooping, his eyes cast down and fixed. He was again thinking. He had a good many things to think about. The coming of the actress brought one more. He was not utterly despondent, but he had been brought to the verge of catastrophe; perhaps beyond the verge. The woman against whom he had done no wrong, and who had brought him to the precipice, now stood in his room, the place of all places in which he could feel the desolation creeping round his soul like rising waters about a man trapped by the tide in some ocean cavern. But the minister was not now thinking of that. Instead his mind recalled wonderingly that fleeting picture of this woman in court, with her eyes gleaming savagely at Searle and crouching like a tigress about to spring.

As if to call attention to her presence, the actress swung the door noiselessly toward the jamb, until the lock caught it with an audible and decisive snap. The minister reached out a hand and touched a button that flooded the room with light.

Miss Dounay was clad exactly as she had appeared in court, except that she was more heavily veiled, so that the prying light revealed no more of her features than the sparkle of an eye. Hampstead had not risen.

"Well!" he said, quietly but emotionlessly.