"I am not. What is Mr. Dinwiddie's inference?" She was looking at him eagerly.
"That you really are a friend of Countess Zattiany, but for some motive or other you are using her name instead of your own. That—that—you had your own reasons for escaping from Austria——"
"Escaping?"
"One was that you might have got into some political mess—restoration of Charles, or something——"
She laughed outright.
"The other was—well—that you are hiding from your husband."
"My husband is dead," she said emphatically.
He had never known that clouds, unless charged with thunder, were noisy. But he heard a black and ominous cloud gather itself and roll off his brain. Had that, after all, been … Nevertheless, he was annoyed to feel that he was smiling boyishly and that he probably looked as saturnine as he felt.
"Whatever your little comedy, it is quite within your rights to play it in your own way."
"It is not a comedy," she said grimly.