"Yes, of course. That was a day of tragedy, when you and Rudyard Byng won a hundred Royal Humane Society medals, and we all felt like martyrs and heroes. I had the most creepy dreams afterwards. One night it was awful. I was being tortured with Mr. Mappin's needle horribly by—guess whom? By that half-caste Krool, and I waked up with a little scream, to find Tynie busy pinching me. I had been making such a wurra-wurra, as he called it."
"Well, it is a startling idea that there's poison powerful enough to make a needle-point dipped in it deadly."
"I don't believe it a bit, but—"
Pausing, she flicked a speck of fluff from her black dress—she was all in black, with only a stole of pure white about her shoulders. "But tell me," she added, presently—"for it's one of the reasons why I'm here now—what happened at the inquest to-day? The evening papers are not out, and you were there, of course, and gave evidence, I suppose. Was it very trying? I'm sure it was, for I've never seen you look so pale. You are positively haggard, Ian. You don't mind that from an old friend, do you? You look terribly ill, just when you should look so well."
"Why should I look so well?" He gazed at her steadily. Had she any glimmering of the real situation? She was staying now in Byng's house, and two days had gone since the world had gone wrong; since Jasmine had sunk to the floor unconscious as Al'mah sang, "More was lost at Mohacksfield."
"Why should you look so well? Because you are the coming man, they say. It makes me so proud to be your friend—even your neglected, if not quite discarded, friend. Every one says you have done such splendid work for England, and that now you can have anything you want. The ball is at your feet. Dear man, you ought to look like a morning-glory, and not as you do. Tell me, Ian, are you ill, or is it only the reaction after all you've done?"
"No doubt it's the reaction," he replied.
"I know you didn't like Adrian Fellowes much," she remarked, watching him closely. "He behaved shockingly at the Glencader Mine affair—shockingly. Tynie was for pitching him out of the house, and taking the consequences; but, all the same, a sudden death like that all alone must have been dreadful. Please tell me, what was the verdict?"
"Heart failure was the verdict; with regret for a promising life cut short, and sympathy with the relatives."
"I never heard that he had heart trouble," was the meditative response. "But—well, of course, it was heart failure. When the heart stops beating, there's heart failure. What a silly verdict!"