"Well, you can see!" says she, spreading out her hands and giving a comprehensive glance round her—a glance that rests as if stricken on the screen. What awful possibilities lie behind that!
"Yes, yes, of course. Yet I fancied I heard voices."
"How curious are our fancies!" says poor Margaret, taking the tone of an advanced Theosophist, even while her heart is dying within her.
"Where is Tita?" asks Rylton suddenly. To Margaret's guilty conscience the direct question sounds like an open disbelief in her former answers. But Rylton had asked it thus abruptly merely because he felt that if he lingered over it it never might be asked; and he must know. "Where is Tita?" asks he again. Where indeed!
"She is here—at least," hurriedly, almost frantically, "with me, you know; staying with me. Staying, you know."
"Yes, I know. Gone out, perhaps?"
"No, n—o. In retirement," says Margaret wretchedly. Is she listening? How can she answer him all through? If he speaks against her, what is she to do? If she has in all justice to condemn her in some little ways, will she bear it? Will she keep her fingers in her ears?
"Ah—headache, I suppose," says Rylton.
"Yes; her head aches sometimes," says Margaret, who now feels she is fast developing into a confirmed liar.
"It usen't to ache," says he.