“Why do you think so?” she demanded, in a low voice.
He smiled, until it seemed as if he meant it for his only reply, then he said, in a dulcet voice:
“A little bird whispered——”
She made a movement of impatience.
“Is there anything you do not know? Is there anything one does or says that does not reach you?”
He shrugged his shoulders, not cynically, but still with the amused gesture with which one meets the petulance of a spoiled child.
“I believe there is no secret in any of the lives of the men and women who call you friend—friend!—that you have not become possessed of. How is a mystery!”
“It is a question of sympathy, my dear Lady Grace,” he said. “Nature bestowed upon me a large and sympathetic heart——”
Again she made a movement of impatience.
“Spare yourself the trouble of trying to delude me!” she said, in a kind of quiet despair. “There are many who fully believe you to be what your face, and voice, and manner, and reputation make you appear, but I am not one of them—I think I have known you from the first.”