“Yes.”
Silence for a moment. Then:
“Doesn’t the fact that of my own accord I regained the sense of things—or rather the nonsense of things, doesn’t it all absolve me from your wrath?” still that slight mocking inflection. Peter thought how pleasant it would be to hurt him. Hurt him quite badly.
“Of your own accord?” she flung indignantly into the mouthpiece. “Why, I’ve seen the papers. Naturally, after your business troubles were so unexpectedly smoothed out, you had leisure to turn your attention to—minor matters.”
“As it happened,”—she could not complain now of too light a note in the icy incision of his speech, “I did not know that the Gobert thunderbolt had been averted, until I reached home after seeing Merle.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I did not know.”
“The envelope was opened towards half-past six, according to the Press.”
“I believe that’s correct.”
“And Merle writes that you turned up about nine o’clock.”