Still silent, Lady Montbarry invited her by a wave of the hand to go on.
Henry approached, attentively watching his sister-in-law. Agnes went on.
'No trace of Ferrari has been discovered in England,' she said.
'Have you any news of him? And will you tell me (if you have heard anything), in mercy to his wife?'
Lady Montbarry's thin lips suddenly relaxed into their sad and cruel smile.
'Why do you ask me about the lost courier?' she said.
'You will know what has become of him, Miss Lockwood, when the time is ripe for it.'
Agnes started. 'I don't understand you,' she said. 'How shall I know?
Will some one tell me?'
'Some one will tell you.'
Henry could keep silence no longer. 'Perhaps, your ladyship may be the person?' he interrupted with ironical politeness.
She answered him with contemptuous ease. 'You may be right, Mr. Westwick. One day or another, I may be the person who tells Miss Lockwood what has become of Ferrari, if--' She stopped;with her eyes fixed on Agnes.
'If what?' Henry asked.
'If Miss Lockwood forces me to it.'
Agnes listened in astonishment. 'Force you to it?' she repeated.
'How can I do that? Do you mean to say my will is stronger than yours?'
'Do you mean to say that the candle doesn't burn the moth, when the moth flies into it?' Lady Montbarry rejoined. 'Have you ever heard of such a thing as the fascination of terror? I am drawn to you by a fascination of terror. I have no right to visit you, I have no wish to visit you: you are my enemy. For the first time in my life, against my own will, I submit to my enemy. See! I am waiting because you told me to wait--and the fear of you (I swear it!)creeps through me while I stand here. Oh, don't let me excite your curiosity or your pity! Follow the example of Mr. Westwick.
Be hard and brutal and unforgiving, like him. Grant me my release.
Tell me to go.'
The frank and simple nature of Agnes could discover but one intelligible meaning in this strange outbreak.
'You are mistaken in thinking me your enemy,' she said.
'The wrong you did me when you gave your hand to Lord Montbarry was not intentionally done. I forgave you my sufferings in his lifetime.
I forgive you even more freely now that he has gone.'
Henry heard her with mingled emotions of admiration and distress.
'Say no more!' he exclaimed. 'You are too good to her; she is not worthy of it.'
The interruption passed unheeded by Lady Montbarry. The simple words in which Agnes had replied seemed to have absorbed the whole attention of this strangely-changeable woman. As she listened, her face settled slowly into an expression of hard and tearless sorrow.
There was a marked change in her voice when she spoke next.
It expressed that last worst resignation which has done with hope.
'You good innocent creature,' she said, 'what does your amiable forgiveness matter? What are your poor little wrongs, in the reckoning for greater wrongs which is demanded of me?
I am not trying to frighten you, I am only miserable about myself.
Do you know what it is to have a firm presentiment of calamity that is coming to you--and yet to hope that your own positive conviction will not prove true? When I first met you, before my marriage, and first felt your influence over me, I had that hope.
It was a starveling sort of hope that lived a lingering life in me until to-day. You struck it dead, when you answered my question about Ferrari.'
'How have I destroyed your hopes?' Agnes asked. 'What connection is there between my permitting Ferrari to use my name to Lord Montbarry, and the strange and dreadful things you are saying to me now?'
'The time is near, Miss Lockwood, when you will discover that for yourself. In the mean while, you shall know what my fear of you is, in the plainest words I can find. On the day when I took your hero from you and blighted your life--I am firmly persuaded of it!--you were made the instrument of the retribution that my sins of many years had deserved. Oh, such things have happened before to-day! One person has, before now, been the means of innocently ripening the growth of evil in another. You have done that already--and you have more to do yet. You have still to bring me to the day of discovery, and to the punishment that is my doom. We shall meet again--here in England, or there in Venice where my husband died--and meet for the last time.'
In spite of her better sense, in spite of her natural superiority to superstitions of all kinds, Agnes was impressed by the terrible earnestness with which those words were spoken.
She turned pale as she looked at Henry. 'Do you understand her?' she asked.
'Nothing is easier than to understand her,' he replied contemptuously.
'She knows what has become of Ferrari; and she is confusing you in a cloud of nonsense, because she daren't own the truth.
Let her go!'
If a dog had been under one of the chairs, and had barked, Lady Montbarry could not have proceeded more impenetrably with the last words she had to say to Agnes.
'Advise your interesting Mrs. Ferrari to wait a little longer,' she said. 'You will know what has become of her husband, and you will tell her. There will be nothing to alarm you. Some trifling event will bring us together the next time--as trifling, I dare say, as the engagement of Ferrari. Sad nonsense, Mr. Westwick, is it not?
But you make allowances for women; we all talk nonsense. Good morning, Miss Lockwood.'
She opened the door--suddenly, as if she was afraid of being called back for the second time--and left them.
