Nettie felt a thrill of pleasurable excitement, and her little show of anger was very well assumed.
“Are you quite sure you ought to talk to me like that?” she said.
“Yes. You will understand what I mean when I tell you that I was Lucy Davidson. I fancied some of the people here would have recognized me, but it seems they haven’t.”
“Oh!” said Nettie sharply, and sat still, wondering what meaning she was to attach to this since she had never heard of Lucy Davidson, until her companion leaned forward a trifle.
“I have told nobody else, but it was not Bernard Appleby who came to meet me at Northrop lodge,” she said.
Nettie’s gasp of astonishment was perfectly genuine this time, for though the story Appleby had told her had been very vague in respect to the part played by Lucy Davidson she had been able to supply the deficiencies in it, and she was sure of her companion now.
“And you let them think—how could you?” she said with flashing eyes.
Miss Clavier was evidently almost as astonished as her listener, but she had committed herself.
“It was too late to do any good by speaking when I heard they suspected him—and I was just a little fond of Tony once,” she said. “Of course, he wasn’t worth it—he never was—and that’s why I tried to warn you. You made me feel you wanted to be kind to me.”
Nettie laughed a little, almost scornfully. “Now, I don’t know if that was nice of you. If you only meant to punish Mr. Palliser it wasn’t.”