him from head to foot with a look of unqualified scorn; gazed at him steadily, with eyes that seemed to read all the secrets of his evil life; and then, slowly unfurling her peacock fan, she broke into a silvery laugh, long and clear and sweet, but with a ring of contemptuousness in its every note.
"You are mistaken, Sir George," she said quietly, moving towards the open window of the corridor, as if to return to the house. "Your almost infallible judgment is at fault. I am not that kind of person."
She would have passed him and gone into the house, but he put himself between her and the open window. He barred her way with all the hulk of his handsome, over-dressed person. That ringing laughter, the insolent sparkle in her magnificent eyes, goaded him to madness. Sir George had a diabolical temper, and the insensate vanity of a successful roué. That any woman could really despise him was beyond his power of belief; but a woman who pretended to despise him put herself beyond the pale of his courtesy.
"No," he muttered savagely. "You are not that kind of person. You are not that kind of person for me, because for the last three years you have been that kind of person for somebody else. I thought you must have been tired of Bothwell Grahame by this time, and that I should have had my chance."
In a breath, as if from the stroke of a Cyclops hammer, George Varney had measured his length upon the tesselated pavement under the verandah. It was an old man's arm that felled him; but an athlete of five-and-twenty could not have struck a firmer blow.
General Harborough had stolen into the gardens to smoke a solitary cigar, while Herr Stahlmann played his Sauterelle, and, coming quietly round the house, he had approached the verandah just in time to hear Sir George's last speech. He had not hesitated a minute as to the manner of his answer.
"Go to your guests, Valeria," he said, with quiet command; "I will see to this blackguard."
Valeria obeyed half mechanically. The shock of those last few moments had made thought impossible. Her mind seemed to have suddenly become a blank. She went through the brilliant rooms, wondering at the lights and flowers and smartly-dressed people, seeing everything vaguely, with a puzzled doubtfulness as to her own identity. She talked and laughed with more than usual animation for the rest of the evening. She had a friendly smile and a pleasant word for each departing guest. She enchanted the artists by her appreciation of their work; yet she had no more consciousness of what she said or to whom she spoke than a condemned criminal might have on the eve of his execution.
