Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx. There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and conscientious man of the world who has tried to find good in human nature.
“Poor boy!” sobbed the lady. “Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home.” Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong silence—stronger than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar shuffled before it, her eyes glittering with suppressed communicativeness. She was obviously bubbling over with talk relevant and irrelevant, but the Rector had the chivalry to check it by his cold silence.
After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which aggravated while it cowed her.
“When did you hear this news?” he asked.
“Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I—it was so sudden. I was terribly upset.”
“M—yes.”
“I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning,” the mistress of Stagholme went on eagerly, “and I was just going to write to you when you came in.”
With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called “Every Man his own Lawyer” lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
“And from whom did you hear it?” pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking at the book with an air of recognition.