"How do you know that?"
"Never mind how I know it. Only I do, for a certainty."
"Not from me; I have told nobody. If she has been writing to you,"—Mrs. Oxenham, gentle woman that she was, flared up at the thought—"all I can say is that I am shockingly deceived in her."
"She never wrote to me in her life. But that's neither here nor there. The fact remains that she was in this house two days ago, and is out of it now. What have you done with her?"
There was an irritating abruptness in his tone and manner, and his sister threw up her head with a haughty gesture.
"I? Is she a child, that anybody should do anything with her? She has some relations living in the town, and has gone to stay with them."
"When did she go?"
"Oh, my dear Tony, you are too absurd! And I don't choose to be catechised in this fashion. Miss Liddon is nothing to you."
"That's all you know about it. When did she go, Mary?"
He looked hard at her, and she at him, and she held her breath for a moment, trying to grasp the situation.