And now she had renewed the acquaintance publicly and with disastrous results.
As she sat there she began to wonder at herself, at the strength of her temper, the secret violence of her nature. She had yielded like a child to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had ignored her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of a woman whom she despised?
Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with the more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman’s successful impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed to rise up against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked in the crowd, and heard for an instant Miss Schley’s drawlling voice speaking to her husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the acquaintance between herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of tyranny, as if the acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were a worse act of tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course. How could Lord Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as he had? And what reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down within her as woman’s instinct. No man could have understood it.
And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash Carey.
How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting and absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But mumblings and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark to Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the ugly sound of Carey’s incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp clasp of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his flushed, damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been wrong in what she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been wrong now, after what had passed?