"Good Lord, no! What a thing to say!"
She took up her work, and answered with cool composure:
"Nevertheless I have wondered if anybody ever thought it. You see I'm the only one in the house—the only one who knows the combination—who is a sort of stranger. Dixon and Isaac are like members of the family."
"Don't talk such rubbish," he protested, then leaning nearer, "Have you had that on your mind all this time? Is that what's made the change?"
She looked up at him, startled:
"Change—what change?"
"Change in you. Yes," in answer to the disturbed inquiry of her glance, "there is one. I've noticed it; other people have."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, you're different, you've lost your good spirits. You're not like you were before this happened."
Her response came with something combative in its countering quickness: