He laughed unpleasantly.
“No need for us to fence,” he said. “You and I know who he is. What I do want to know, what I have been wondering all the way from the point there—four miles of hard galloping and one question—why are you his friend? What is he to you?”
“Really, Captain Griffiths,” she protested, looking up at him, “of what possible interest can that be to you?”
“Well, it is, anyhow,” he answered gruffly. “Anything that concerns you is of interest to me.”
Philippa realised at that moment, perhaps for the first time, what it all meant. She realised the significance of those apparently purposeless afternoon calls, when through sheer boredom she had had to send for Helen to help her out; the significance of those long silences, the melancholy eyes which seemed to follow her movements. She felt an unaccountable desire to laugh, and then, at the first twitchings of her lips, she restrained herself. She knew that tragedy was stalking by her side.
“I think, Captain Griffiths,” she said gravely, “that you are talking nonsense, and you are not a very good hand at it. Won't you please ride on?”
He made no movement to mount his horse. He plodded along the soft sand by her side—a queer, elongated figure, his gloomy eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Until this fellow Lessingham came you were never so hard,” he persisted.
She looked at him with genuine curiosity.
“I was never so hard?” she repeated. “Do you imagine that I have ever for a single moment considered my demeanour towards you—you of all persons in the world? I simply don't remember when you have been there and when you haven't. I don't remember the humours in which I have been when we have conversed. All that you have said seems to me to be the most arrant nonsense.”