"Oh—" She remembered the incident. "Why didn't I? Why should I? You always hide what you don't have to tell, don't you?"
Neale pondered this negligent axiom for a time, and then said hesitatingly, "But if the servants happened to mention it?"
"Oh," she explained quickly, as if mentioning something that went without saying, "oh, of course I told the servants not to speak of it."
"You did!" He felt that he was looking through what he had always thought was the opaque surface of things, and seeing a great deal more going on there than he had dreamed. "But can you count on them?"
She continued to be as surprised at his surprise as he at the whole manœuver. "Oh, of course you can never count on servants unless there's something in it for them. I gave them a little tip apiece."
"You did!" He could only stupidly repeat his exclamation. "What did they say?"
"Why, they found it perfectly natural. They won't mention it—not of course unless somebody else tips them more, and I don't see why anybody should, do you?"
Neale stood looking at her, a little consternation mingling with his astonishment. This was what it was to have been brought up in what people called a civilized way, this smooth mastery of concealment ... how easy it had been for her, at the breakfast table yesterday, not to give the faintest hint she had just been talking animatedly with him; and this morning not the faintest hint to Livingstone that she was laughing at his expense. Why, that lovely face was just like a mask. You hadn't the least idea what was going on behind it.
There was a silence. She was looking up at him with a new expression, almost timidly. "You don't like my hiding things?" she asked him, coming to a stop. They were near the pension now, standing in the twilight on a deserted street.
He aroused himself to shrug his shoulders and answer evasively, "Oh, it's not in the least any business of mine."