He winced at that suddenly and sharply, but he made no verbal protest. Only in the silence that followed there was something passionate, something which she never remembered to have encountered before in her dealings with him.
At the end of a long pause he spoke, with obvious constraint. "And you will not tell me what he said?"
"Is it worth while?" said Chris. "I daresay we shall never see him again."
"He insulted you, no?" said Bertrand.
She yielded, half-involuntarily, to his persistence. "He made some—rather horrid—insinuations. He spoke of the duel and of what happened at Valpré. And he asked—he asked if—Trevor knew."
A fierce oath burst headlong from Bertrand, the first she had ever heard him utter. He apologized for it instantly, almost in the same breath, but she was startled by the violence of it none the less, so startled that she decided then and there that, if she would keep the peace between him and his enemy, she must confide in him no further.
"But that was really all," she hastened to assure him. "I left him then, and—and I think we had better forget it, Bertie. Promise me you will."
He took the persuasive hand she laid upon his arm, but for several seconds he did not speak. It seemed as if he could not trust himself to do so.
At last, "Christine," he said, "I think that your husband ought to know."
She started at the words, almost snatching her hand from him. "Bertie!
What do you mean? Know of what?"