He looked closely, searchingly, into her eyes.
"Is it Scott?" he said.
She did not answer him. She stood as one paralysed, and up over face and
neck and all her trembling body, enwrapping her like a flame, there rose
a scorching, agonizing blush.
He held her there before him and watched it, and she saw that his eyes
were piercingly bright, with the brightness of burnished steel. She could
not turn her own away from them, though her whole soul shrank from that
stark scrutiny. In anguish of mind she faced him, helpless, unutterably
ashamed, while that burning blush throbbed fiercely through every vein
and gradually died away.
He let her go at last very slowly. "I--see," he said.
She put her hands up over her face with a childish, piteous gesture. She
felt as if he had ruthlessly torn from her the one secret treasure that
she cherished. She was free--she knew she was free. But at what a cost!
"So," Eustace said, "that's it, is it? We've got at the truth at last!"
She quivered at the words. Her whole being seemed to be shrivelled as
though it had passed through the fire. He had wrenched her secret from
her, and she had nothing more to hide.
Sir Eustace walked to the end of the room and back. He halted close to
her, but he did not touch her. He spoke, briefly and sternly.
"How long has this been going on?"
She looked up at him, her face pathetically pinched and small.
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