“No! No proof, because none is needed. You can’t have evidence—it is impossible!”
“Then that is all, Mr. Courtenay. You needn’t tell me what you think of me. Your opinion doesn’t interest me. But perhaps after you hear the evidence I speak of, you’ll sing another tune. Oh, I’m not going to tell you about it. Ask Mrs. Stannard.”
“I asked you not to mention that lady’s name. Good morning, Mr. Roberts.”
“Good morning.” And Bobsy went away, filled with conviction of Eugene Courtenay’s guilt.
Courtenay went at once over to see Joyce.
“I’ve missed you so,” she said, simply, as she met him on the Terrace. “Why haven’t you been here?”
“I thought better not, darling. I can’t control myself sufficiently to hide my love for you. And I feared it might bring embarrassment on you if I let it be seen by any one. Oh, Joyce, it seems so long to wait! Must it be two years? I can’t live through it.”
“Hush, Eugene. It seems sacrilege even to speak of our love and poor Eric dead so short a time. Be patient, dear heart. We are both young. You couldn’t love me, or respect me, if I failed in ordinary behaviour toward a husband’s memory. And Eric was good to me.”
“Good to you! Losing his head over every pretty woman he met! Joyce, how could you ever marry him?”
“He made me. Don’t you know how some women succumb to cave-man wooing? I don’t understand it myself, but his whirlwind love-making carried me off my feet, and I had promised him before I knew it.”