It was the appearance of the aproned maid that broke their unity. The last course was on the table, the last taste of its pungent fruit essence on their tongues--and what was the girl's errand now? The eye of her mistress was inquiring.
"Some one has come, Mrs. Herrick." The woman's proper formula seemed to fail her. She looked as if she had been frightened.
"Some one?" Mrs. Herrick showed asperity. "What name?"
"He is coming in." As she spoke the girl shrank a little to one side.
With his long coat open, hanging from the armpits, with ruffled hair, and lips apart, and from breathlessness a little smiling, Harry appeared in the doorway. Kerr leaned forward. Mrs. Herrick did not move. She was facing the last arrival and she was smiling more flexibly, more naturally, than Harry; but it was Flora who found the first word.
"You! I--I thought it was Clara." She was struggling for nonchalance, for poise, at this worst blow, so unexpected.
"Clara won't be down," Harry said, advancing. "How d'ye do, Mrs. Herrick? How d'ye do, Kerr?"
"How d'ye do?" said the Englishman, without rising.
Flora gripped the arms of her chair to keep from springing up in sheer nervous terror. A possible purpose in Harry's coming, that even Mrs. Herrick's presence would not defer, shot through her mind. Was he alone? Or were there others--men here for a fearful purpose--waiting beyond in the hall? But Harry had turned his back upon the door behind him with a finality that declared whatever danger had come into the house was complete in his presence.
"I've dined, thanks," he said, but, stripping off his greatcoat, accepted a chair and the glass of cordial Mrs. Herrick offered him. The ruddy, hard quality of his face, were it divested of its present smile, Flora thought, might well have frightened the maid; but, for all that, it was not so implacable as Kerr's face confronting it. The look with which he met the intrusion had a quality more bitter than the challenge of an antagonist, more jealous than a mere lover's; and that bitterness, that jealousy which was between them came out stingingly through their small pleasantness. It could not be, Flora thought in terror, that Mrs. Herrick intended to leave these two enemies to each other! Mrs. Herrick had risen; and Flora, following, saw both men, also uprisen, hang hesitatingly, as if unready to be deserted; yet with well-filled glasses, and newly smoking tobacco, both were caught.