"
They both laughed, and fell to talking again of the interview.
Stephen Knight's ears were burning. He could not hear any of the things
people were saying; but he had a lively imagination, and, always
sensitive, he had grown morbidly so since the beginning of the
Northmorland-Lorenzi case, when all the failings and eccentricities of
the family had been reviewed before the public eye, like a succession of
cinematograph pictures. It did not occur to Stephen that he was an
object of pity, but he felt that through his own folly and that of
another, he had become a kind of scarecrow, a figure of fun: and because
until now the world had laughed with instead of at him, he would rather
have faced a shower of bullets than a ripple of ridicule.
"How do you do?" he inquired stiffly, and shook Miss Lorenzi's hand as
she gave it without rising from the pink sofa. She gazed up at him with
immense, yellowish brown eyes, then fluttered her long black lashes in a
way she had, which was thrilling--the first time you saw it. But Stephen
had seen it often.
"I am glad you've come, my White Knight!" she said in her contralto
voice, which would have been charming but for a crude accent. "I was so
afraid you were cross."
"I'm not cross, only extremely ang--vexed if you really did talk to that
journalist fellow," Stephen answered, trying not to speak sharply, and
keeping his tone low. "Only, for Heaven's sake, Margot, don't call
me--what you did call me--anywhere, but especially here, where we might
as well be on the stage of a theatre.
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