She made no answer. Only she faced him, no longer afraid, but coldly critical. Her look was almost pitying. As they stood confronted, the man had a curious experience. Her wonderful likeness to her mother vanished utterly, and he saw a woman strange to him not only in person but in type--a type as yet unknown. There was a pause, which was broken by the roll of the gong in the hall. Gaunt started. Hemming threw open the door and announced dinner. Caught at such a moment, the master of the house, to his annoyance, was taken aback and hesitated. His wife did not seem to share his embarrassment. With her head held high she advanced the few steps which separated them, and laid her hand upon his arm. Together they walked out into the hall, under the respectful but close observation of the butler, and entered the dining-room, a dark and gloomy apartment, on the wooded north side of the house. Here dinner was laid, in the style of a half-century ago. To Gaunt's surprise, his wife began to talk almost at once. She spoke of the glorious view from the window of her room, inquired the height of Gladby Top, and mentioned her own taste for gardening. After a few minutes of moody uncertainty, Gaunt joined in her attempt to keep up appearances; and it was not until Hemming and Grover had placed dessert upon the table and left the room that the inevitable silence fell. CHAPTER X ANDROMEDA "_Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at, from outside the walls.... And up, like a weary yawn, with its pulleys, Went, in a shriek, the rusty portcullis; And, like a glad sky the north wind sullies, The lady's face stopped its play As if her first hair had grown grey_."--Browning. The final closing of the door upon Hemming, as he discreetly retired, seemed to the bride to fill the gloomy room with reverberations. The door was not banged, yet she heard its echoing dying away like a murmur in cavernous heights. She had an illusion of being in some dark sea-cave, into which the tide would slowly crawl and swallow her up. Her feet were cold, as though the first shallow waves already laved them. All through the dinner she had been putting a strain upon herself. She was now near the breaking-point. Gaunt was pouring wine from the heavy, stumpy cut-glass decanter into a wine-glass. She heard the lip of the bottle clink, as though his hand were not quite steady.