“I should at once obey you, my lady,” rejoined Richard, “but I am not at liberty to do so. Sir Wilton has the command of my time till the month of May. I am bound to be at his orders, whether I choose or not, except he tell me to go.”

Lady Ann stood speechless and stared at him with her icicle-eyes. Richard turned away to his work. Lady Ann entered and shut the door behind her. Suddenly her behaviour had turned very peculiar, for in his anger, Richard had flashed on her a look which she knew but could not identify, and which somehow frightened her. She could not rest until she could shape and identify the reminiscence! Familiar enough with the expression of her husband’s face when he was out of temper, she had yet failed to identify with it that look she had just seen. She could not isolate and verify it, and so went on talking to him, keeping to the point, trying again to raise the same expression passing swiftly across his face.

“Mr.—, —I don’t know your name,” she resumed, “—no respectable house could harbour such behaviour. I grant sir Wilton is partly to blame, for he ought not to have allowed the library to be turned into a workshop. That, however, makes no difference. This kind of thing cannot continue!”

Richard went on with his work, and made no reply. Lady Ann looked in vain for a revival of the expression that had struck her. For a moment she thought of summoning Miss Malliver to do what she would not condescend to do herself, namely, enrage him, that she might have another chance with the suggested likeness. But something warned her not to risk—she did not know what.

“You must not imagine yourself of importance in the house,” she resumed, “simply because a friend of the family happens to be interested in the kind of thing you do—very neatly, I admit, but—”

She stopped short. At this allusion to Barbara, Richard’s rage boiled up with a swelling heave. Lady Ann turned pale—pale even for her—murmured something inaudible, put her hand to her forehead, and left the room.

Richard’s anger fell. He thought at first that he had frightened her. “Perhaps they will leave me alone now.” He closed the door she had left open behind her, unlocked the other, and fell once more to his work.

For the time the disturbance was over. When Miss Malliver and Vixen, lingering near, saw lady Ann walk past, holding her hand to her forehead, they also turned pale with fear. The man must be terrible indeed to have silenced their lady in her own house, and had his own way with her! Vixen dared not go near him again for a long time.