“I know exactly what it was, Godfrey. But I think it was much cleverer of you to know you meant it than it is of me to know that you meant it. You meant that Donna Lucinda Valdez has a personality markedly different from that possessed by Lady Dundrannan?”
“I don’t suppose that I did know that I meant it—at that moment.”
“But you know that you mean it now?”
“That—and more,” he said.
“Your idea of seeing whether Arsenio’s system worked seems to have led you a little further than you contemplated,” I observed. He had chaffed me that evening, after my dinner at Arsenio’s—or Nina’s—expense; he had aired his shrewdness. I seemed entitled to give him a dig.
“Are you surprised?” he asked, after a pause, suddenly, taking not the least heed of my gibe.
There were a hundred flippant answers that I might have given him. But I gave him none of them. His young, strong face wore a dour look—the look of a man up against something big, determined to tackle it, not yet seeing how. The animation which had filled him, as he warmed to his story, had for the moment worked itself out. He looked dull, heavy, tired.
“No, I’m not surprised,” I said. “But what’s the use? You know her story.”
“What do you mean by that?” he demanded, rather peremptorily.
“She threw up everything in the world for Arsenio Valdez; she still blushes like a school-girl when Arsenio backs Number 21. They’re lovers still, as you yourself said a little while ago. Well, then——! Besides—there’s Nina. Are you going to—desert?”