"Why, that they're not getting on together."
The moment she had said it, a rush of fear that she had betrayed Traill's confidence, overwhelmed her with a sense of nausea.
"Please don't say I've said that," she begged.
"Certainly not; but, how on earth can you say it? Captain and Mrs. Durlacher may not be lovers in the passionate sense of the word, but I know of few married people who get on as well as they do."
She looked at him with increasing amazement.
"Some time ago—yes—perhaps. But not now?"
"Yes, now. I know it for a fact. They hit it off admirably."
Hit it off—Traill's very words! Then it was a lie. A lie of Mrs. Durlacher's that day when they were down at Apsley, a lie to win his sympathy at a moment when she had all but lost it. She had come down there to Apsley with the intention of estranging them. Traill had seen through that. Sally had realized at the time that that was what had stirred him to anger when he had come into the dining-room, finding his sister there with her. Mrs. Durlacher had failed then. She remembered her smothered feelings of delight at the attitude he was taking when she left the room; but it was after that, after she had gone upstairs, that Mrs. Durlacher, with this lie of her unhappiness, had won him to her side.
"Are you absolutely sure of that?" she whispered.
"Why, of course! If anybody's spreading that report about, it's a confounded lie."