She had yielded like a child
to a sudden impulse. She had not thought of consequences. She had ignored
her worldly knowledge. She had considered nothing, but had acted
abruptly, as any ignorant, uneducated woman might have acted. She had
been the slave of a mood. Or had she been the slave of another woman--of
a woman whom she despised?
Miss Schley had certainly been the cause of the whole affair. Lady Holme
had spoken to Rupert Carey merely because she knew that her husband was
immediately behind her with the American. There had been within her at
that moment something of a broad, comprehensive feeling, mingled with the
more limited personal feeling of anger against another woman's successful
impertinence, a sentiment of revolt in which womanhood seemed to rise up
against the selfish tyrannies of men. As she had walked in the crowd, and
heard for an instant Miss Schley's drawlling voice speaking to her
husband, she had felt as if the forbidding of the acquaintance between
herself and Rupert Carey had been an act of tyranny, as if the
acquaintance between Miss Schley and her husband were a worse act of
tyranny. The feeling was wholly unreasonable, of course. How could Lord
Holme know that she wished to impose a veto, even as he had? And what
reason was there for such a veto? That lay deep down within her as
woman's instinct. No man could have understood it.
And now Lord Holme had gone out in the dead of the night to thrash Carey.
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