“What?”
“No,” said Diana calmly. “We talked on the telephone just after you left the room, and his first words were: ‘Are you single? We’ll be married to-morrow. If you’re married, you’ll be a widow to-night!’ I knew at once that it was Dempsi.”
“What did you say?” he asked, awe-stricken.
“I told him I was married,” she said, with such coolness that he was inarticulate. “I couldn’t very well explain why I was here if I wasn’t married, could I? Then he got so violent that I told him I was a widow. Bobbie, isn’t lying easy?”
Bobbie could say nothing.
“Then he sprang another one on me, and I told him that I was living with my Uncle Isaac—I used to have an Uncle Isaac,” she said in self-defence. “He was a sort of an adopted uncle. He died of delirium tremens. All our family have done something out of the common. I couldn’t say I was living alone in this big house, and anyhow, Gordon is away. It’s wonderful luck, his going.”
Bobbie paced the floor in a state of supreme agitation.
“What about the money?” he asked.
“I owed it to him. Before he ran away into the bush we had a terrible scene. He wanted me to elope with him, and when I wouldn’t, he said he would commit suicide. He was like a madman; he cried over me, he kissed my feet, and then went off to lose himself in the bush. He didn’t even do that properly.”
“And the money?”