She raised her eyebrows incredulously. If she was surprised and disturbed, as he believed, she concealed her feelings perfectly.
“You saw me—outside—in a crowd of that sort?” she said disdainfully.
He nodded with confidence.
“Not dressed as you are now, and not looking as you do now. You were well disguised for your purpose—of journalism—in a hat and coat which would make you laugh if you were to see them on the stage, for instance. I thought the disguise very clever, but I remembered your face too well to be mistaken.”
“You were mistaken, though,” retorted Miss Davison with a forced laugh.
But he stuck to his guns.
“I think not,” he said gently. “I watched you for some time. I—I watched you till—till you gave something to—someone else—a man, and then disappeared.”
If he had had doubts before, he had none then. Miss Davison said nothing, but she sat so still, with such a fixed look of terror and dismay upon her handsome face, that he was smitten to the heart, and felt himself a brute to have tortured her, even though the knowledge of what he had seen could not be kept to himself, and though it was the greatest kindness he could do her to confide it in the first place to her ears.
It seemed quite a long time before she spoke. Then she turned to him sharply, and said in a voice which sounded hard, metallic, unlike her own—
“You have made a most curious, a most unaccountable mistake. You have left me quite dumb. I don’t know what to say.”