'Few, I suppose, are without them.'
'But who is he to whom you openly write—this Captain John Elliot?'
'Intolerable! How dare you ask me?' demanded Maude, her breast swelling, her cheeks, not flushed, but pale with anger, and her eyes flashing.
'A military friend of your brother's, I suppose we shall call him,' said he with an undisguised sneer.
'And a dear friend of mine,' said Maude defiantly, exasperated to find that the very discovery she wished to avoid had been made, and by this person particularly; 'but here comes my brother, and perhaps you had better make your inquiries of him,' she added, as a great sigh of mingled anger and relief escaped her on hearing Roland dismount under the porte-cochère; but, unable to face even him, distressed, humiliated, and altogether unnerved by her recent interview, all it involved, and all she had undergone, poor little Maude rushed away to seek alleviation amid a passion of tears, unseen and in the solitude of her own room.
So this was Maude's secret!
Hawkey Sharpe cared not just then to face Roland Lindsay; but with hands clenched he sent a glance of hate after the retreating figure of Maude, and withdrew in haste.
They met in future, as we shall show, even amid Roland's guests; but with a consciousness—a most humiliating and irritating one to Maude, that there was almost a secret understanding—that odious love-making between them—and known, as she thought, to themselves alone.