“Nothing; nothing; only—only what I saw.”

“Well, what did you see?”

Instead of answering this question at once she shifted her ground.

“If you cared—as you say—why didn’t you tell some one?”

“Tell some one? Who could I tell?”

“Oh, any one. Lady Rideover, for one. She’d made a promise not to mention me; but you hadn’t.”

“But why should I have mentioned you when I never supposed she had any notion—”

“But you see that’s it. If you’d cared—so much—you’d have done it—to one of your sisters or the other. But you didn’t—not to either; and so they got the idea—”

“Yes? What idea did they get? Go on. Tell me.”

I noticed that she was twisting and untwisting her fingers, and that she had begun throwing me quick, nervous glances through the half-light.