"Pray relieve Lady Luce's anxiety, Nell, and tell her that she has
amused us with a canard too ridiculous to be anything but false," he
said tenderly.
She looked up at him, her brows drawn, her eyes pitiful in their agony
of appeal, her lips quivering.
"It is true!" she said, in a voice which, though low, was perfectly
audible.
There was an intense silence. No one moved; every eye was fixed on her
in breathless excitement. They asked themselves if it were possible they
had heard aright. Drake's hand pressed more heavily on Nell's shoulder;
she could hear his breath coming heavily, could feel him shake. A faint
cry escaped Lady Angleford's parted lips.
"Nell!" she cried.
Nell rose and looked at her with the same agony of appeal in her eyes,
but with her face firmly set, as if she were buoyed up by an inflexible
resolution.
"What Lady Luce has said is true," she said. "I will go----"
Drake was by her side in an instant. He took her cold hand and drew it
within his arm.
"No!" he said. "You will not go----"
He looked at Lady Luce, and there was no need to finish the sentence.
She smiled, and fanned herself slowly.
"Of course, Miss Lorton can explain it all," she said. "I am very sorry
to have been the cause, the innocent cause, of such an unpleasant scene.
But really you forced me to speak; and we all know that though Miss
Lorton has admitted her--what shall I call it?--little escapade, there
must be some satisfactory explanation. No one will believe for a moment
that she really intended to elope with Sir Archie."
While she had been speaking, some of the guests had edged toward the
door. At such moments the kindest thing one can do is to remove oneself
as quickly as possible. When a sudden death happens in a ballroom, the
dancing ceases, the music stops, the revelers vanish. Something worse
than death had happened in this drawing-room. The happiness of more than
one life had been blasted as by a stroke of lightning.
There was a general movement toward the door. A group of old
friends--county neighbors, real friends of Drake and the
countess--gathered round the little group. Falconer and Dick pushed
their way through them none too ceremoniously.
"I'll take my sister home, Lord Angleford," said Dick hotly; while
Falconer took her hand, his face white, his eyes flashing.
Nell would have drawn away from Drake and turned to them; but he put his
arm round her waist and held her by sheer force.