'Will you come into the drawing-room?' asked the husband, reappearing in
the doorway perfectly calm and composed. 'Then, you will design those
clasps for me?'
'I will try,' answered Andrea.
He was quite unable to control his inward agitation. Elena looked at him
with a provocative smile.
'What were you doing in there?' she asked him, still smiling in the same
manner.
'Your husband was showing me some unique curiosities.'
'Ah!'
There was a sardonic sneer upon her lips, a manifest mocking scorn in
her voice. She settled herself on a wide divan covered with a Bokhara
carpet of faded amaranthine hues on which languished great cushions
embroidered with spreading palms of dull gold. Here she leaned back in
an easy, graceful attitude, and gazed at Andrea from under her drooping
eyelids, while she spoke of trivial society matters in a voice that
insinuated its tones into the young man's heart, and crept through his
blood like an invisible fire.
Two or three times, he surprised a look which Lord Heathfield fixed upon
his wife--a look that seemed surcharged with all the infamies he had
stirred up just now. Again that criminal thought sped through his mind.
He trembled in every fibre of his being. He started to his feet, livid
and convulsed.
'Going already?' exclaimed Lord Heathfield. 'Why, what is the matter?'
and he smiled a singular smile at his 'young friend.
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