"Maggie Cardinal—the Cardinal niece, you know," he said impatiently.
"Did she say anything? I don't remember."
"Yes, mother. You remember perfectly well. She said that they were all talking about me and Maggie."
"Did she?" The old lady slowly counted her stitches. "Well, dear, I shouldn't worry about what they all say—whoever 'they' may be."
"Oh, I don't care for that," he answered contemptuously, "although all the same I'm not going to have Amy running that girl down. She's been against her from the first. What I want to know is has Amy been to father with this? Because if she has I'm going to stop it. I'm not going to have her bothering father with bits of gossip that she's picked up by listening behind other peoples' key-holes."
Amy, meanwhile, had come in and heard this last sentence.
"Thank you, Martin," she said quietly.
He turned to her with fury. "What did you mean at breakfast," he asked, "by what you said about myself and Maggie Cardinal?"
She looked at him with contempt but no very active hostility.
"I was simply telling you something that I thought you ought to know," she said. "It is what everybody is saying—that you and she have been meeting every day for weeks, sitting in the Park after dark together, going to the theatre. People draw their own conclusions, I suppose."