Strefford rang, and waited. Would Susy appear again? Perhaps she had done so before only because she had been on the watch. . . .
But no: after a slight delay a bonne appeared—the breathless maid-of-all-work of a busy household—and at once effaced herself, letting the visitor in. Lansing was sure that not a word passed between the two, of enquiry on Lord Altringham's part, or of acquiescence on the servant's. There could be no doubt that he was expected.
The door closed on him, and a light appeared behind the blind of the adjoining window. The maid had shown the visitor into the sitting-room and lit the lamp. Upstairs, meanwhile, Susy was no doubt running skilful fingers through her tumbled hair and daubing her pale lips with red. Ah, how Lansing knew every movement of that familiar rite, even to the pucker of the brow and the pouting thrust-out of the lower lip! He was seized with a sense of physical sickness as the succession of remembered gestures pressed upon his eyes. . . . And the other man? The other man, inside the house, was perhaps at that very instant smiling over the remembrance of the same scene!
At the thought, Lansing plunged away into the night.
