“A very pretty, honourable, decent thing to do in your opinion?”
“Oh,” said Miss Page, with her most disarming smile, “I don’t pretend not to be human.”
“Well, that’s very reassuring. Can you tell us why Mrs. Ives didn’t hear you outside on the porch, Miss Page?”
“I wasn’t on the porch. I had just started to come up the steps when I stopped to listen. I had on tennis shoes, which wouldn’t make any noise at all on the lawn.”
“You say that you could hear Mrs. Ives distinctly?”
“Oh, quite.”
“So that anybody else could have heard her distinctly too?”
“Anyone who was standing in that place could have—yes.”
“She was making a secret rendezvous and yet was speaking in a tone sufficiently audible for any passer-by to hear?”
“She probably thought that there would be no passer-by.”