He wanted to persuade her that he was concealing merely some delightful surprise from her. But he did not succeed. With all his experience of the world and of women he was not clever enough to deceive that simple woman.
“I’m waiting, Mr. Matthew,” she said, in a tone that flattened the smile out of Matthew’s sympathetic face. She was ruthless. The fact was, she had in an instant convinced herself that Cyril had met some girl and was engaged to be married. She could think of nothing else. “What has Cyril been doing?” she added, after a pause.
“It’s nothing to do with Cyril,” said he.
“Then what is it?”
“It was about—Mrs. Scales,” he murmured, nearly trembling. As she offered no response, merely looking around her in a peculiar fashion, he said: “Shall we walk along a bit?” And he turned in the direction in which she had been going. She obeyed the suggestion.
“What did ye say?” she asked. The name of Scales for a moment had no significance for her. But when she comprehended it she was afraid, and so she said vacantly, as though wishing to postpone a shock: “What did ye say?”
“I said it was about Mrs. Scales. You know I m-met her in Paris.” And he was saying to himself: “I ought not to be telling this poor old thing here in the street. But what can I do?”
“Nay, nay!” she muttered.
She stopped and looked at him with a worried expression. Then he observed that the hand that carried her reticule was making strange purposeless curves in the air, and her rosy face went the colour of cream, as though it had been painted with one stroke of an unseen brush. Matthew was very much put about.
“Hadn’t you better—” he began.