“How do you know that?” she flung back.
He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal himself in the confidence of the household. Then, to avoid involving Anna, he answered: “Madame de Chantelle sent for me yesterday.”
“Sent for you—to talk to you about me?” The colour rose to her forehead and her eyes burned black under lowered brows. “By what right, I should like to know? What have you to do with me, or with anything in the world that concerns me?”
Darrow instantly perceived what dread suspicion again possessed her, and the sense that it was not wholly unjustified caused him a passing pang of shame. But it did not turn him from his purpose.
“I’m an old friend of Mrs. Leath’s. It’s not unnatural that Madame de Chantelle should talk to me.”
She dropped the screen on the table and stood up, turning on him the same small mask of wrath and scorn which had glared at him, in Paris, when he had confessed to his suppression of her letter. She walked away a step or two and then came back.
“May I ask what Madame de Chantelle said to you?”
“She made it clear that she should not encourage the marriage.”
“And what was her object in making that clear to you?”
Darrow hesitated. “I suppose she thought——”