“It is enough that I say so. You can tell him I told you.”

Carter Bruce hesitated.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but that is n't enough. I—”

Henrietta looked at him steadily for a moment and then let her eyes fall.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “You mean you can't trust my words. You mean I am a liar.”

“I have to be frank,” Carter said. “Gay has told me about William Vane. She does not believe there is a William Vane. When I told her—”

“You told her I had said Freeman has a wife?” asked Henrietta. “And you promised not to tell, Carter!”

“I told her.”

“Well?”

“She said, 'Perhaps Henrietta is romancing again.'”