“Who do you mean?” said the girl, the even modulations of her voice not hiding its undertone of apprehension.
“Who do you suppose?” retorted Mrs. Cassidy, teasingly.
“I can’t imagine,” replied Viola. “I haven’t the slightest idea to whom you’re referring.”
“Oh, yes, you have, now,” said Mrs. Cassidy, wagging her head knowingly, and flushing over her broad, buxom face with the pleasure of her secret. “Try and guess.”
“Who do you mean, Mrs. Cassidy?” said Viola. Her pretension of indifference had suddenly disappeared. She tried to make her voice commanding, but it was full of a frightened distress.
“Mr. John Gault,” announced the other, her narrow eyes, alight with curiosity, fastened on her lodger’s face. The change in its expression, quick, inexplicable in its sudden tightening of the muscles and veiling of the eyes, told the watcher, not what the romance was that she so keenly scented, but confirmed her suspicions that there was a romance of some sort or other.
Viola turned back to the tea-things. As she moved them about, the eager eyes of the watcher saw that her hands were trembling.
“He’s the finest gentleman I ever set eyes on since I came to California,” continued the widow, immensely interested and hardly able to wait for further developments. “I said to Micky, after he’d been here, ‘There, Mick Cassidy, is the way they grow real gentlemen. No imitation about him!’”
“Was he here?” came the question, in a hardly comprehending voice.