“He—he implied it.”
“And you believed him?”
“I—I couldn’t understand your doing it.” The Lady began to wonder whether the promised lecture were to be given or received.
Nancy sprang up and walked the length of the room.
“Oh, the horrid little cad!” she said explosively.
The Lady turned champion of the absent Englishman.
“He’s not a cad, Nancy; he is a thoroughbred little Englishman. I have seen his type before, though never so extreme a case. He is frank and honest as a boy can be. He’s born to his British ways, as we are born to ours. It is only that you’re not used to him, and don’t understand him.”
“He doesn’t leave much to the imagination,” Nancy observed scathingly. Then she dropped down beside the Lady, and looked her straight in the eyes. “I don’t want you to be thinking horrid things of me,” she said slowly. “I don’t want you to think I have been two-sided with Mr. Barth. After what happened at Sainte Anne-de-Beaupré, I have tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. It has been a miserable chance that has brought us into such close quarters; a recognition wasn’t going to be pleasant for either of us. But, every time I meet the man, he seems possessed with an insane desire to babble to me about his ankle. I could tell more about it than he can, for I was in league with the doctor, and heard all the professional details. A dozen times, I have been on the very verge of betraying myself. Last night, it reached a climax. He found me alone in the library, and he began to talk. Really, he was more agreeable than I ever knew him before. But you know how it is: the presence of a grass widow always moves you to rake up all the divorce scandals of your experience. Before we had talked for ten minutes, the man was calmly informing me that he was really very fond of his nurse, that, in the secret recesses of his heart, he called her his Good Sainte Anne, that he wished he could meet her again, and finally that he was very sorry he had tipped her.”
“Indeed!”
“No; I don’t mean that,” Nancy protested hastily. “You are the disloyal one now. He didn’t imply that she had not deserved the tip. His regrets were for sentimental reasons, not frugal. He was very nice and honest about it, and I never liked him half so well.”