Lady Smith-Evered glanced at her. “Why d’you say he ‘used to’? Doesn’t he do it now?”
“He’s gone,” said Muriel. “Didn’t you know?”
“Gone?”
Muriel told her how Lord Blair had sent him off on a mission to the Oases. Her voice betrayed no trace of feeling as she explained away his sudden departure.
“Well, my dear,” said Lady Smith-Evered, “I know you and he quite like each other, but I must say I can’t understand it. I’m relieved to hear he has gone. I don’t trust him in regard to women.”
Muriel uttered a short laugh. “One might say the same of any man,” she replied.
Lady Smith-Evered looked at her curiously. “I wonder what’s the real reason of his being sent off so suddenly,” she remarked, a crafty expression coming into her face. “His going on a mission is probably only eyewash.”
Muriel shrank before her prying eyes, and a feeling of anger was awakened in her; but she only shrugged her shoulders.
“I wonder if your father has been wise enough just to dismiss him in this way,” Lady Smith-Evered mused. “I’ll find out: yes, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
The expression of inquisitive, self-complacent cunning in the woman’s face, and her actual blindness to the real facts of the matter, combined to arouse in Muriel an uncontrollable hostility.