y at him
with abuse. Something in her manner egged him on to say more:

"You may pull the wool over my father's eyes, but you have never
deceived me. You have been waiting for years for him to die, hoping
every illness would finish him, so that you could spend his money.
Well, he's not dead yet. Suppose, after all, you found he had altered
his will? It's not too late for that; he could get a solicitor here in
an hour, and he would do it, too, if he knew what had gone on here
to-night. Oh, don't misunderstand me, I don't want him to know, for
his own peace of mind. As long as you behave yourself decently inside
his house you are safe from me. But this sort of thing has got to
stop. That's all."

As he turned to go he glanced at her again. She was almost
unrecognisable. Her eyes had narrowed to slits, her cheekbones showed
an unexpected prominence under their patches of red. One hand fumbled
and twisted the heavy pearls at her throat; he could hear her laboured
breathing. How she was going to hate him now! The thought suddenly
came to him that if there had been a revolver or a knife handy she
would have tried to use it on him. Well, he had the upper hand of her;
that was all that mattered. She could hate him as much as she chose....

He left her standing there, staring after him fixedly. Once outside,
he had to admit he had taken a pretty strong line. Of course, in a way
it was not his business to issue ultimatums of this sort. Yet he would
have done the same again. The thought that his aunt or Esther Rowe
might easily have come upon the scene he had just interrupted filled
him with rage. Of course, from now on it was going to be still more
difficult to remain under the same roof with Therese; it would require
a skin thicker than his to endure it. Still, it would not be for long.

When he reached his room he discovered with a reaction of amusement
that he still held the bottle of Evian water upright in the crook of
his arm. There it had been throughout the foregoing passage at arms.
He laughed, and his anger began to recede. Still, he could not sleep,
and it was three o'clock when he put out his light. As he did so he
listened to a faint sound outside.

It was Therese, who, only after this long time, was coming upstairs to
bed.

CHAPTER XIX

Of the foregoing incident Esther remained in total ignorance.
Accordingly, when next morning she heard Lady Clifford's maid, Aline,
say that her