there was, beyond question, some deep understanding between her and this man.
Suddenly Ruyler's gaze burned through to his wife's consciousness.

She moved her eyes to his, flushed to her hair, then for a moment looked almost gray.

But she recovered herself immediately and further showed her remarkable powers of self-possession by turning back to her partner and talking to him with animation instead of plunging into conversation with the man on her right.
At the same moment Ruyler became subtly aware that Mrs.Thornton was looking at his wife and Doremus, and as his eyes focused he saw her long, thin, mobile mouth curl and her eyes fill with open disdain.

The mist in his brain fled as abruptly as an inland fog out in the bay before one of the sudden winds of the Pacific.

In any case, his mind hardly could have remained in a state of confusion for long; but that his young wife was being openly contemned by the cleverest as well as the most powerful woman in San Francisco was enough to restore his equilibrium in a flash.
Whatever his wife's indiscretions, it was his business to protect her until such time as he had proof of more than indiscretion.