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She felt the Colonel’s arm tighten under her hand.

“Do not move,” said Marianne, under her breath. “Please. It is quite all right.”

“Marianne —”

“I am perfectly composed. Look. She is coming this way.”

She was. The little woman in grey had detached herself from the doorway, and was coming across the floor, through the dancers, with the calm, unhurried, remorseless progress of a well-handled frigate. She did not look to the right or the left. She did not seem in the least to mind that she was drawing a good deal of attention. She had, in tow, one very handsome but rather pale gentleman, who was making the most polite and ineffectual attempt to walk a little slower; and it was only when she reached the foot of the dais, and dropped a small, exact curtsey to the lady of the house, that she turned her head and looked up at Marianne, from a height of some five feet two.

“Lady Ardleigh,” said Mrs. Willoughby, “I hope you will forgive an impertinence. I understand that Colonel and Mrs. Brandon are here. My husband and I should like very much to be presented.”

There was a silence upon the dais that might have been cut with a knife. Lady Ardleigh, who had attended a certain ball some years ago and remembered the talk afterwards, and who had been about to say something crushing, closed her mouth, and opened it, and closed it again. Then, with a look that might in a lesser woman have been called curiosity, she inclined her head. “Colonel Brandon. Mrs. Brandon. Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby,” said her ladyship, in the manner of one announcing a chapter of Genesis. “I believe you know of each other.”

“We do,” said Marianne.

She said it quite clearly. It was the first thing she had said, and it surprised her to hear her own voice, which was low and level and perfectly unshaken. She curtseyed. Mrs. Willoughby returned it with a small, brisk, correct movement of the head; and it was in that instant, while their eyes met, that Marianne understood, with a slight shock, what it was that she was looking at.

It was not a rival. It was not a fool. It was not even an enemy. It was a woman not much above her own age, with a sharp face, and a determined chin, and a look of deep and level scrutiny; a woman who had come, at the cost of considerable pride, into a hostile room, in order to look at another woman, and who was not afraid.

“Mrs. Brandon,” said Sophia Willoughby. “You will excuse my coming across. My husband has been in a state of some agitation since Tuesday week, and it seemed to me that it would be more economical to have it out in a ballroom than in my drawing-room. I hope I do not offend you.”

“Not in the least,” said Marianne.

“I am not a person who likes to be kept in the dark. I have been told several things this month, and I have been told them in the wrong order; and I have found that the best way of arriving at the truth is generally to ask.” She paused. “I understand that you have a boy of ten in your house.”

“I have.”

“I have two children of my own. I shall not pretend I have not heard, since it would be tiresome for both of us.” The sharp little face did not change, but there was, in the level voice, for the first time, a very small note of something else, which Marianne could not have named. “I only wished to say that I do not want you to think he is not much thought of.”

There was a small, singular pause.

“Sophia,” said Mr. Willoughby, in a low voice.

“Yes, my dear. I know. You are quite right, and I am quite out of order. But I made up my mind.” She turned back, without moving her eyes. “Mrs. Brandon. I do not ask you anything. I only say that whatever else he may be, he is not a man who has ever been indifferent to a child. And I think you should know it.”

Marianne looked at her. She found that she had, in the last half minute, quite lost the whole of the speech she had spent a week composing; and it appeared to be of no consequence, for something better had come. She said:

“I am glad to hear it, Mrs. Willoughby. I should have been very sorry to think otherwise.”

And then, for the first time, she turned her head and looked at him.

It was a very odd thing. She had supposed, in the week of her preparation, that at this moment she should feel a very great deal. She had thought of it as a kind of ordeal, a sort of fire, through which she should pass with her head up; and she had steeled herself, over some days, for a blaze. There was no blaze. There was only a man, of eight-and-thirty, in a well-cut coat, with a handsome, tired, rather apprehensive face, standing in front of her upon the polished floor of a ballroom and looking at her as a person might look who had been sent for by the head of the school.

“Mrs. Brandon,” said Willoughby.

“Mr. Willoughby.”

“I —” He stopped. It was extraordinary, she thought; he, who had never in his life been at a loss for a word, or a compliment, or a smile, stood with his mouth a little open, looking for something to say. “You are looking well.”

“I am very well. I thank you.”

“Brandon.”

“Willoughby,” said the Colonel, his eyes locked upon the man, in a voice as quiet as a closed door.

There was another silence. Beyond it the music was still going; a violin was playing a passage of some brightness, and a hundred pairs of feet were moving in time to it, and a chandelier, over their heads, was throwing small rainbow lights upon the floor. Mr. Willoughby moistened his lips. He looked, for one moment, at Marianne, then quickly at the Colonel; and it appeared to Marianne that something passed between the two men which she was not intended to see, and which she had no wish to; something old, and hard, and perfectly understood, upon which years had passed without the smallest change.

There was a very long pause. And it was Mrs. Willoughby, who had stood through the whole of the exchange with her hand upon her husband’s arm and her eyes upon the middle distance, and had not stirred by so much as an eyelash, who spoke into it.