Warren knocked the ashes from his cigarette with painstaking deliberation. "Must be a rather lively old ghost," he commented, striving to live up to his principle of never showing surprise, "according to all Forbes tells."
"Oh, poor Burton," Julia cried, with a glance of angelic commiseration in the direction of her grimly silent lover. "Wouldn't you have thought that Burton's misfortune would have appealed to the better instincts of the most depraved? But instead, they take advantage of his blindness to trick him in the most infamous fashion. The person who calls herself Agatha Kent—I suppose it really is her name, though any one so absolutely deceitful is as likely to lie about one thing as another—"
"Well?" trumpeted Warren, his strained patience showing itself in the unnecessary loudness of his challenge.
"Do hush, Mr. Warren, everybody's looking at us. This Kent woman isn't a nice motherly person. She isn't old at all, not a bit older than I am."
Warren sucked at his cigarette for a moment and blew the smoke through his nose. He needed a little time in order to preserve the imperturbable demeanor on which he prided himself. He looked at Julia to be sure she was in earnest, looked at Forbes to see if he were not going to deny this incredible story, and then expressed his feelings by a low whistle.
"Not a nice motherly person," he repeated inanely. "About as old as you are."
"She may even be a little younger," Julia admitted generously.
Warren's air of incredulity deepened. He threw the uncommunicative Forbes a challenging glance.
"Do you mean that Forbes has been spending all his time with her for the past three months and never suspected that she wasn't an old woman?"