Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, “Did he say that he—did not love her?”
“Yes, the cad!”
“He cannot have been a nice man,” she said, with that evenness of enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct aid of the mind.
The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.
“No,” he said, “he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon him as a friend.”
“Did he,” asked Mrs. Agar, “say anything about her personal appearance? Was it that?”
The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly have seen clear.
“No—no,” he replied. “It was not that. It was merely a matter of expediency, I believe.”
But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his farewell speech over the whist-table, but as he went to the door she rose and followed him slowly.