"Here—then?" Her surprise was manifest.
"In an inner room. The door was ajar, and I fancy he heard every word of your messenger's statement."
"Is that what you meant by 'within the month'?" She felt somehow that she had been trapped.
"This morning was within the month. I made a statement of fact, did I not?"
His skin was like yellow parchment, crisscrossed with incised lines. Those at the sides of his mouth moved outward, which was as near as Lord Kneedrock's solicitor ever came to a smile.
Nina sprang to her feet in a rage. "You are quite impossible, Mr. Widdicombe!" she flared. "There are none so blind as those that won't see. I came to you for assistance, and you treat the matter—the very grave matter—as though it were a joke."
"I treat all matters just as I find them, Mrs. Darling," was his calm retort.
"Viscount Kneedrock is mad," she affirmed, mincing the manifest fact no longer.
The solicitor bowed.
"If so, I deplore it," he said; "but he has had quite enough in his life to make him so."