“I forbid your marriage to Geoffrey Delamayn!  I insist on his performing the promise he gave me, to make me his wife!  I have got it here in his own words, in his own writing.  On his soul, he swears it to me—­he will redeem his pledge.  His mistress, did you say?  His wife, Mrs. Glenarm, before the week is out!”

In those wild words she cast back the taunt—­with the letter held in triumph in her hand.

Daunted for the moment by the doubt now literally forced on her, that Anne might really have the claim on Geoffrey which she advanced, Mrs. Glenarm answered nevertheless with the obstinacy of a woman brought to bay—­with a resolution not to be convinced by conviction itself.

“I won’t give him up!” she cried.  “Your letter is a forgery.  You have no proof.  I won’t, I won’t, I won’t give him up!” she repeated, with the impotent iteration of an angry child.

Anne pointed disdainfully to the letter that she held.  “Here is his pledged and written word,” she said.  “While I live, you will never be his wife.”

“I shall be his wife the day after the race.  I am going to him in London—­to warn him against You!”

“You will find me in London, before you—­with this in my hand.  Do you know his writing?”

She held up the letter, open.  Mrs. Glenarm’s hand flew out with the stealthy rapidity of a cat’s paw, to seize and destroy it.  Quick as she was, her rival was quicker still.  For an instant they faced each other breathless—­one with the letter held behind her; one with her hand still stretched out.

At the same moment—­before a word more had passed between them—­the glass door opened; and Julius Delamayn appeared in the room.

He addressed himself to Anne.

“We decided, on the terrace,” he said, quietly, “that you should speak to Mrs. Glenarm, if Mrs. Glenarm wished it.  Do you think it desirable that the interview should be continued any longer?”

Anne’s head drooped on her breast.  The fiery anger in her was quenched in an instant.

“I have been cruelly provoked, Mr. Delamayn,” she answered.  “But I have no right to plead that.”  She looked up at him for a moment.  The hot tears of shame gathered in her eyes, and fell slowly over her cheeks.  She bent her head again, and hid them from him.  “The only atonement I can make,” she said, “is to ask your pardon, and to leave the house.”

In silence, she turned away to the door.  In silence, Julius Delamayn paid her the trifling courtesy of opening it for her.  She went out.

Mrs. Glenarm’s indignation—­suspended for the moment—­transferred itself to Julius.

“If I have been entrapped into seeing that woman, with your approval,” she said, haughtily, “I owe it to myself, Mr. Delamayn, to follow her example, and to leave your house.”

“I authorized her to ask you for an interview, Mrs. Glenarm.  If she has presumed on the permission that I gave her, I sincerely regret it, and I beg you to accept my apologies.  At the same time, I may venture to add, in defense of my conduct, that I thought her—­and think her still—­a woman to be pitied more than to be blamed.”