"I suppose," he said abruptly, "that they have been telling you about the nonsense that's going on in their dear, silly heads."
And with a nod he indicated the summer-house, where, against the creeper-clad entrance, Elza's white dress gleamed in the sunshine. Rosemary made no reply. Peter's words had somehow acted like a douche of cold water upon her sense of rest and well-being. It was true then! He did know. Though Elza and Anna had told him nothing, he knew. How? Rosemary would have given worlds for the right to ask him, but suddenly her promise to Jasper loomed before her with paramount importance, and put a seal upon her lips.
"Won't you tell me?" Peter insisted.
Of course there was a simple explanation for the whole thing. Those dear people, Elza, Maurus, even Anna, were not models of discretion. Their voices were loud and penetrating, and, when they were excited about any project or event, they would discuss it here, there and everywhere at the top of their voices, and with a total disregard of possible eavesdroppers. Peter's knowledge of Elza's plans may have come about quite innocently. Rosemary was quite sure it had come about innocently. But somehow she longed for that perfect security and trust in Peter which she used to feel even when he was most capricious and his love-making most tempestuous. Why hadn't he told Elza that he knew? Why, instead of discussing the plan over with Elza or one of the others, did he feign ignorance with them, and suddenly elect to go away on an obviously futile excuse?
Oh, how Rosemary hated all this mystery! And how she feared it! And how, above all, she hated that promise which she had made to Jasper, and which prevented her at this moment from having a straight talk with Peter.
"So you won't tell me?" he reiterated, and his voice sounded curiously harsh, quite different to his usual very pleasant, musical tones. Peter had the voice of a musician. It was deep in tone and beautifully modulated. Peter's voice had been one of the things about him that had captivated Rosemary's fancy in the past. Now, he spoke through his teeth, with that hateful cigarette in the long holder held between the comers of his lips. Rosemary tried to be flippant.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed, with a little broken laugh, "are you trying to play the rôle of the heavy father, Peter, or of the silent strong man? And now you are frowning just like the hero in one of Ethel M. Dell's books. When are you going to seize me by the wrist and whack me with a slipper?"
It was very easy to make Peter laugh. He was laughing now, and the scowl fled for the moment from his face.
"Don't play the fool, Rosemary," he said in his slangy, boyish way. "Tell me what Aunt Elza has been saying to you out here?"
"But, you silly boy," she riposted, "there's nothing to tell."