“Well,” she said, after a long pause, “why don’t you talk?”
“I have nothing to say, Lady Gwendolyn, that would be sufficiently tragical, or surprising, either, to amuse you,” he answered, with indulgent irony.
“I am not so sure of that. Do you know what somebody told me once?”
“Somebody must have told you so many things at different times.”
“But I mean about you?”
“I am no Œdipus, Lady Gwendolyn,” he answered; and, though he constrained himself to speak coolly, his lips went white.
“That you have a secret in your life—a skeleton in your cupboard,” she said, in a quick breath, that showed that she was speaking with a purpose, and not out of mere audacity and carelessness. “Is it true?”
He seemed to swallow down a great lump in his throat before he could answer her; and then his voice was strangely hoarse, and unlike his natural tones.
“Do you ask this out of curiosity only, Lady Gwendolyn?”
It was her turn to steady her voice before she responded: