First Period Chapter 10 The Mockery of Deceit

The wretched woman (listening intently for the sound of a step on the
stairs) refused to submit to a shameful exposure, even now. To her
perverted moral sense, any falsehood was acceptable, as a means of
hiding herself from discovery by Iris. In the very face of detection,
the skilled deceiver kept up the mockery of deceit.

"My dear," she said, "what has come to you? Why won't you let me go to
my room?"

Iris eyed her with a look of scornful surprise. "What next?" she said.
"Are you impudent enough to pretend that I have not found you out,
yet?"

Sheer desperation still sustained Mrs. Vimpany's courage. She played
her assumed character against the contemptuous incredulity of Iris, as
she had sometimes played her theatrical characters against the hissing
and hooting of a brutal audience.

"Miss Henley," she said, "you forget yourself!"

"Do you think I didn't see in your face," Iris rejoined, "that you
heard him, too? Answer my question."

"What question?"

"You have just heard it."

"No!"

"You false woman!"

"Don't forget, Miss Henley, that you are speaking to a lady."

"I am speaking to Lord Harry's spy!"

Their voices rose loud; the excitement on either side had reached its
climax; neither the one nor the other was composed enough to notice the
sound of the carriage-wheels, leaving the house again. In the
meanwhile, nobody came to the drawing-room door. Mrs. Vimpany was too
well acquainted with the hot-headed Irish lord not to conclude that he
would have made himself heard, and would have found his way to Iris,
but for some obstacle, below stairs, for which he was not prepared. The
doctor's wife did justice to the doctor at last. Another person had, in
all probability, heard Lord Harry's voice--and that person might have
been her husband.