"Bosh. You know perfectly well that I was never silly about my children. Well—I don't care what you say about Brigit, I know she is all right. As yet, anyway," she added.
"She loves that—that brute," he stammered, wiping the perspiration from his face with a crumpled handkerchief. "I saw her face as she left his studio."
Lady Kingsmead pursed her mouth thoughtfully.
"That may be," she admitted. "I've thought for some time that something was in the air——"
Breaking off, she glanced hastily at him. The old habit of telling him her thoughts as they came to her was still strong, but this was not her Gerald Carron. This was a new man of whom she knew little. For this much wisdom she had learned: that every new love makes a new man of a man.
And this Carron, with his wild eyes, was no person to confide in.
"Come, buck up, old thing," she said, with an affectation of brusque good-humour: "you haven't been sleeping. Isn't that it?"
"Yes. I'll never sleep any more."
"And you're taking—Veronal?"
"Yes, sometimes. Oh, don't bully me, Tony! I'm—done."