‘It seems’—he was smiling at Nancy—‘I shall have to go to New York, and then take the Cuba mail.’
‘Are you going to join your friend in business?’
‘Business, I fear, is hardly my vocation.’
There was a tremor on Nancy’s lips, and about her eyelids. She said abruptly:
‘I thought you were perhaps in business?’
‘Did you? What suggested it?’
Tarrant looked fixedly at her; in his expression, as in his voice, she detected a slight disdain, and that decided her to the utterance of the next words.
‘Oh’—she had assumed an ingenuous air—‘there’s the Black Lead that bears your name. Haven’t you something to do with it?’
She durst not watch him, but a change of his countenance was distinctly perceptible, and for the moment caused her a keen gratification. His eyes had widened, his lips had set themselves; he looked at once startled and mortified.
‘Black lead?’ The words fell slowly, in a voice unlike that she had been hearing. ‘No. I have nothing to do with it.’