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She had not come for simpering feminine compliments, insincere smiles and subtly disguised cuts; now her tawny speckled eyes were hard and shining, ruthless as those of a cat watching its prey.

Corinna returned her stare, not at all disconcerted or intimidated. “I shall, indeed, madame. Though perhaps not for the reason you suppose.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“I’m sorry. I thought you would.”

Amber’s claws came out at that. You bitch, she thought. I’ll pay you off for that. I know a way to make you sweat.

“You’re looking mighty smug it seems to me, madame—for a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her.”

Corinna’s eyes widened incredulously. For a moment she was silent, then very quietly she said, “Why did you come here, madame?”

Amber leaned forward in her chair, holding tightly to her gloves with both hands, eyes narrowed and voice low and intense. “I came to tell you something. I came to tell you that whatever you may think—he loves me still. He’ll always love me!”

Corinna’s cool answer astonished her. “You may think so if you like, madame.”

Amber sprang up out of her chair. “I may think so if I like!” she jeered. Swiftly she crossed the few feet of floor between them and was standing beside her. “Don’t be a fool! You won’t believe me because you’re afraid to! He never stopped seeing me at all!” Her excitement was mounting dangerously. “We’ve been meeting in secret—two or three times a week—at a lodging-house in Magpie Yard! All the afternoons you thought he was hunting or at the theatre he was with me! All the nights you thought he was at Whitehall or at a tavern we were together!”

She saw Corinna’s face turn white and a little muscle twitched beside her left eye. There! thought Amber with a fierce surge of pleasure. She felt that one, I’ll wager! This was what she had come for: to bait her, to prod her most sensitive emotions, to humiliate her with boasting of Bruce’s infidelity. She wanted to see her cringe and shrink. She wanted to see a woman who looked as miserable, as badly beaten as she felt.

“Now what d’you make of his fidelity to you!”

Corinna was staring at her, a kind of repugnant horror on her face. “I don’t think there’s any shred of honourable feeling left in you!”

Amber’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; she did not realize how unpleasant she looked, but was past caring if she had. “Honour! What the devil is honour! A bogey-man to scare children! That’s all it’s good for these days! You can’t think what a fool you’ve looked to all of us these past months—we’ve been laughing in our fists at you—Oh, never deceive yourself—he’s laughed with the rest of us!”

Corinna got to her feet. “Madame,” she said coldly, “I have never known a woman of worse breeding. I can well believe that you came out of the streets—you act like it and you talk like it. I am only amazed you could have produced such a child as Bruce.”

Amber gasped, completely taken aback at that. Lord Carlton had never told her that his wife knew she was the boy’s mother. And yet she did know and had never said a word to anyone, had not refused to have him about her, and seemed to love him as sincerely as if he had been her own.

Good Lord! the woman was a greater fool even than she had thought!

“So you did know that he’s mine! Well, now you know me too, and I wonder how you like knowing that one day my son will be Lord Carlton—everything your husband has and is will belong to my child, not to yours! How d’you like that, eh? Are you so damned virtuous and noble that it doesn’t rankle in your flesh at all?”

“You know very well that’s impossible unless his legitimacy can be proved.”

She and Corinna stood very close, breathing each other’s breath, staring into each other’s eyes. Amber felt an overpowering desire to grab her by the hair, tear at her face, destroy her beauty and her very life. Something, she hardly knew what, held her in check.

“Will you please leave my rooms, madame,” said Corinna now, her lips so stiff with fury that though they shook they scarcely moved to form the words.

All at once Amber laughed, a high hysterical laugh of fury and nervous repression. “Listen to her!” she cried. “Yes, I’ll leave your rooms! I can’t get away from you too soon!” With swift jerky movements she gathered up the muff and fan she had dropped and then turned once more to face Corinna, breathing hard, quivering in every muscle. She could no longer think but she began to say, half unconsciously, something she had long wanted to say to her.

“You’ll soon be lying-in, won’t you? Think of me sometimes then—Or d‘you imagine he’ll be waiting by your bed like a patient dog till you’re—”

She saw Corinna’s eyes close slowly, the irises rolling away. At that instant a man’s harsh voice cracked through the room.

“Amber!”