The sense that she had fallen into a trap, notwithstanding all the perfect simulation of Mrs. Durlacher’s apparently genuine surprise, swept chillingly through her blood.  When once she became conscious again of her bodily existence, felt the pulses throbbing in her forehead, and knew that her heart was beating like the muffled rattling of a kettledrum, she shuddered.  Traill, she knew, had nothing to do with it.  If that thought, with the force of conviction behind it, had entered her mind, she would have fled; driven with the curling lash of fear—­fear of life itself, fear of everything.  But she did not even contemplate it.  It was the woman her instinct mistrusted.  She had realized her an enemy before; now, in the purring tones of her tardy welcome, she recognized in her an enemy whose aggressiveness is active, brought into definite play.

Where lay the trap and how it had been set, she could not conjecture; but that a trap was there, she was convinced, and as she had walked unthinkingly into that room, so she had unsuspiciously fallen into the cruel iron jaws of the relentless machine.  She sat in that chair by the fire, gazing at the hissing logs as they spat at the flames that licked them, and felt all the powerlessness, all the impotence, that the frightened rabbit knows when it is caught in the device of the snarer.

“Did you come down from Town?” said Mrs. Durlacher, presently.

“Yes.”

“It’s a nice drive, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes, it’s lovely.”

“Let me see, how long is it since we met last?”

“Three years, I think, perhaps a little more.”

“Of course—­yes—­of course it must be.  What a good memory you have!  Would you care to see over the house before lunch?  It’s rather a charming old place, don’t you think so?  But of course it’s terribly untidy now.  I haven’t started my house-parties yet, and everything’s generally more or less upside down till my husband and I begin to come down regularly.  Perhaps you’d prefer to wait till after lunch, though?”

Sally rose willingly to her feet.

“Oh no.  Not at all—­I should like to see it immensely.  I think the hall is perfectly wonderful.”

Mrs. Durlacher stood up, her eyes candidly criticizing Sally’s dress.

“Yes, it is rather quaint.  We’ll go through to the library first.”

Then, but not until that moment, not until she had passed through the white heat of the fire, and had felt her spirit charred, did any help come to her.  Traill opened the door abruptly and came into the room.  From the set line of his lips, both of them could see that his temper was loose.  His shutting of the door, every action, was an expression of feeling to which an innate sense of politeness made him deny speech.  He crossed the room without hesitation to join them, shaking hands with his sister.

“They told me you were here, Dolly,” he said, all pleasure of meeting her stamped utterly from his voice.