"Who are your publishers?" he asked after a moment. "Oh, yes, good men—good men. I'm not much of a novel reader myself, but of course I know their name."
And then to her own surprise she told him the tragedy of the expired contract. He listened attentively, his whole mind fixed on her story. When she had finished he put one or two shrewd questions to her, and reflected over her answers, after which he said: "I may as well tell you that I knew this before, Mrs. Walbridge."
She started.
"Oh, did you? Do you know them—Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne, I mean?"
"No. Your husband told me several weeks ago."
Something in his face betrayed to her his distaste either at Walbridge's confidence or the manner in which it had been made, and she flushed faintly. For Ferdie had, she knew, often disgusted people.
He looked at her thoughtfully, and then to her surprise his face changed, and with a very young smile he broke out: "After all, you've changed very little!"
"Oh, Sir John! I'm an old woman," she protested sincerely, "and I was only a child then."
He nodded.
"I know. The outside of you has changed, of course, but you're much the same in other ways. For instance, you are still worrying to death about something—that business of the book, I suppose—just as you were then. I remember one day in the vicarage garden we had been playing tennis, I tried to persuade you, silly young cub that I was, to confide in me."