For a moment there was silence in the veranda—silence but for the tearing of the wind. The reed curtain in the doorway slashed back and forth. The canvas awning rattled like a sail.
“Give me the money,” said Mrs. Vandaleur, without the slightest change of countenance. But I could see that the gauzy, sable laces on the bosom of her dress were heaving like black seaweeds in a storm.
I had brought a check-book and a fountain pen. I wrote a check and gave it to her.
“You might tell me how it happened,” I said as I handed the paper.
“You know,” she said. “He told me what he had lost. I’d seen the cassowary in the corner of the ground, gulping down something a moment before. They always go for anything bright. So I guessed. And when he told me, I brought the bird over to the seat, while he was searching for the stone, and I saw the thing going down its neck inch by inch—as you can see if you watch them swallow anything. Oh, I didn’t take any chances. You’ve spoiled—you’ve spoiled—the best——Did you ever think what it is to be a woman and not so young as you were, and with no prospects—none? You never thought, or felt, or cared, about any woman in the world—and yet——”
Her eyes were very, very blue, and they were very soft to see through the tears that were gathering in them.
She looked at me and then looked away.
“And yet——”
I am never likely to know what she meant by that. Nor do I very much care. For there is a girl down in Sydney.
I never saw Mrs. Vandaleur again.