“Really? Positively? Whom do they say now?”
“Perhaps I had better not tell you. It may surprise you, shock you to hear. I think you knew him—”
“Nothing can well shock me now. I have had too many shocks already. Who do they think it is?”
“A Mr. Quadling, a banker, who is supposed to have absconded from Rome.”
She received the news so impassively, with such strange self-possession, that for a moment he was disappointed in her. But then, quick to excuse, he suggested:
“You may have already heard?”
“Yes; the police people at the railway station told me they thought it was Mr. Quadling.”
“But you knew him?”
“Certainly. They were my bankers, much to my sorrow. I shall lose heavily by their failure.”
“That also has reached you, then?” interrupted the General, hastily and somewhat uneasily.