“You are interested in him, are you not?” she asked.
“In a measure,” he admitted. “He is supposed, mad or not, to be the greatest living authority on the coast defences of England and the state of her battleships. They shelved him at the Admiralty, but he wrote some vigorous letters to the papers and there are people pretty high up who believe in him. Others, of course, think that he is a crank.”
“But why,” she asked, languidly, “are you interested in such matters?”
Mr. Sabin knocked the ash off the cigarette he was smoking and was silent for a moment.
“One gets interested nowadays in—a great many things which scarcely seem to concern us,” he remarked deliberately. “You, for instance, seem interested in this man’s son. He cannot possibly be of any account to us.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Did I say that I was interested in him?”
“You did not,” Mr. Sabin answered, “but it was scarcely necessary; you stopped to speak to him of your own accord, and you asked him to supper, which was scarcely discreet.”
“One gets so bored sometimes,” she admitted frankly.
“You are only a woman,” he said indulgently; “a year of waiting seems to you an eternity, however vast the stake. There will come a time when you will see things differently.”