With great abruptness she began to speak as they walked.
"I knew that you were related to the Isbisters, of course. If you remember, Lady Rossiter said something about them that night that we had dinner together, and I thought at the time——"
She broke off, and Julian, conscious of extreme curiosity as to the reason why she had suddenly introduced so admittedly scabreux a topic, enquired after a moment:
"What did you think at the time?"
"I thought Lady Rossiter wished me to understand that she knew of the relationship in which I once stood to Captain Isbister."
For the life of him, Julian could think of no rejoinder.
"I know that things of that kind always are known, and the people I've been thrown with, sooner or later, always turned out to have heard the story. Or if they hadn't," said Miss Marchrose in a voice of calm despair, "someone took the trouble to tell them."
"Officiousness is the crying sin of the age," Julian observed sententiously.
"It seems to me a purely individual matter. It can't concern anyone else—not even the people who employ me."
"Certainly not."