“I suppose she told you—” and now I felt myself growing red—“that I behaved like a drunken acrobat when she came upon me in the path.”
“No. Did you?” cried Miss Elizabeth, with a ready credulity which I thought by no means pretty; indeed, she seemed amused and, to my surprise (for she is not an unkind woman), rather heartlessly pleased. “Louise only said she knew it must be you, and that she wished she could have had a better look at what you were painting.”
“Heaven bless her!” I exclaimed. “Her reticence was angelic.”
“Yes, she has reticence,” said my companion, with enough of the same quality to make me look at her quickly. A thin line had been drawn across her forehead.
“You mean she’s still reticent with George?” I ventured.
“Yes,” she answered sadly. “Poor George always hopes, of course, in the silent way of his kind when they suffer from such unfortunate passions—and he waits.”
“I suppose that former husband of hers recovered?”
“I believe he’s still alive somewhere. Locked up, I hope!” she finished crisply.
“She retained his name,” I observed.
“Harman? Yes, she retained it,” said my companion rather shortly.