With a sudden unexpected movement she picked up a silver patch-box from the dressing-table and hurled it at him, but her aim was bad and it struck the door-jamb. Gerald jumped. Bruce merely stood quietly and looked at him, surprise in his eyes at first and then a kind of pity as he saw how bewildered and unhappy and scared the boy was.
Amber rushed at him in a shrieking fury, her clenched fists raised. “How dare you sneak into my rooms this way! I’ll have your ears cut off for this!” He moved aside as she struck at him and the blow landed on his shoulder.
He was all but stammering, his face had turned grey, and there was a sick look on his face. “For God’s sake, madame—I had no idea—I didn’t know—”
“Don’t lie to me, you baboon! I’ll show you—”
“Amber!” It was Bruce’s voice. “Give him a chance to speak, why don’t you? This is obviously a mistake.”
Gerald shot him a look of gratitude, but he was clearly somewhat afraid of the woman who stood before him, glowering with rage. “My mother was still in the hall-way. And when I came out she—well—she told me to go back in.”
Amber started to speak again and then she turned and glanced at Bruce, to see what he thought about it. His expression was perfectly serious but his eyes glittered with amusement, even while he had a very obvious sympathy for the unhappy young husband whose duty it now was to challenge him to duel. Honour offered no alternative. And yet it was ridiculous to think of Gerald Stanhope, small and undeveloped with scarcely the courage of an adolescent girl, fighting a man who was not only eight inches taller than he but an accomplished swordsman as well.
Bruce stepped forward, made him an easy bow from the waist, and said politely, “Sir, I regret that you have so much reason to suspect my motives regarding your wife. I offer you my profoundest apologies and hope that you will believe no worse of me than you can help.”
Gerald looked as relieved as a criminal who sees the sheriff come flying with a reprieve just as the noose is being fastened about his neck. He bowed in return. “I assure you, sir, that I am enough a man of the world to know that appearances are often deceiving. I accept your apology, sir, and hope that we may meet again under more congenial circumstances. And now, madame, if you’ll show me the way, I’ll go by your back-staircase—”
Amber stared at him in astonishment. God in heaven! Wasn’t the poor fool even going to fight? And was he going now, to leave his wife’s lover in undisputed possession? Her anger drained away and contempt took its place. She pulled up the bodice of her smock and made him a curtsy.
“This way, sir.”
She crossed the room and opened a door which led down a dark little stair-well. Just before going out Gerald bowed again, very jauntily, first to her and then to Bruce—but Amber could see that the muscles about his mouth quivered nervously. She closed the door behind him and turned to face Bruce; there was a contemptuous smile on her lips which she expected would also be on his.
He was smiling, but in his eyes was a strange expression. What was it? Disapproval of her, pity for the man who had just left, mockery of all three of them? It alarmed her, and for an instant she felt cold and lost and alone. But as she watched, the expression flickered and changed and he made a gesture with one hand, shrugged his shoulders and started toward her.
“Well,” he said, “he wears a pair of horns as well as any man in Europe.”
LONDON HAD GROWN as hysterical as a girl with the green-sickness. Her life these last years had been too full of excitement and tragedy, too turbulent and too convulsive, and now she was uneasy, nervous, in a constant state of worry and fear. No prospect was too dismal, no possibility too remote—anything might happen, and probably would.
The new year had opened despondently, with thousands of homeless men and women and children living in tiny tar-roofed shacks that had been thrown up on the sites of their former homes. Or they were crowded together in the few streets within the walls which had been spared by the Fire, and forced to pay exorbitant rents. In a winter of unusual coldness and severity sea-coal was so expensive that many could not afford it at all. Most of them believed, not unreasonably, that London would never be rebuilt and they had no faith in the present, saw no hope for the future.
An evil star seemed to be ascendant over England.
