"And what were they? Not"—she drew herself up suddenly—"not that that matters," she said with a towering contempt. "The thing that does matter isn't that in these terrible times all foreigners are suspect. The thing that matters is that Lady McIntyre and you—you should allow strange people to—" Her quivering lips could form no more for the moment. She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. "Were you present when they—"
He nodded.
"How you could!" From a great height she dropped contempt on him. And she had scorn to spare for the men of the secret service. "They must be easily satisfied! What do they think they have found in my poor solitary trunk?"
It was perhaps better to go through with the odious business and get it over. "They found your journal."
"What of that?"
"Transcripts of conversations at official dinners—"
"What of that? Always I set down what interesting people say. Every diarist has done that since diaries began. Nan does it. Your friend, Julian Grant, does it. I've done it since I was twelve."
An effect of poise about her, a delicate effrontery in her tone, steeled Napier to ask: "And have you also, since you were twelve, made a practice of photographing fortifications?"
"Fortifications! Oh, this is the very lunacy of suspicion!"
"There was also a tracing of the most important of our new coast defenses."