“Why, I actually took you for it, my dear, in my mad determination to spot it!”
“Me—just now?” His arm dropped away, and he turned from her with a faint echo of her laugh. “Really, dearest, you’d better give it up, if that’s the best you can do.”
“Yes, I give it up—I give it up. Have you?” she asked, turning round on him abruptly.
The parlor-maid had entered with letters and a lamp, and the light struck up into Boyne’s face as he bent above the tray she presented.
“Have you?” Mary perversely insisted, when the servant had disappeared on her errand of illumination.
“Have I what?” he rejoined absently, the light bringing out the sharp stamp of worry between his brows as he turned over the letters.
“I never tried,” he said, tearing open the wrapper of a newspaper.
“Well, of course,” Mary persisted, “the exasperating thing is that there’s no use trying, since one can’t be sure till so long afterward.”
He was unfolding the paper as if he had hardly heard her; but after a pause, during which the sheets rustled spasmodically between his hands, he lifted his head to say abruptly, “Have you any idea how long?”
Mary had sunk into a low chair beside the fireplace. From her seat she looked up, startled, at her husband’s profile, which was darkly projected against the circle of lamplight.