"Miss Fulton," he asked, "you and Mr. Morley are engaged to be married, aren't you?"
"No!" she surprised him. "No; we're not!"
He did not tell her that Morley had said they were.
Greenleaf was now clearly conscious of what he had vaguely felt while listening to Bristow's questioning of Withers: the lame man had the faculty of seeming entirely inoffensive in his queries but at the same time putting into his voice an irritating, challenging quality which was bound to work on the feelings of the person to whom he talked. He had begun to have this effect on Miss Fulton.
"I understood," he informed her, "that you were—er—quite fond of each other."
"Not at all! Not at all!" she denied with increasing vehemence. "I'm not engaged to him now. Nothing could induce me to marry him!"
"Mr. Morley declared this morning that you and he were to be married."
She caught herself up quickly, anger evident in her eyes, and at the same time, also, a look of caution. Bristow decided she wanted to tell nothing, to give him no advantage, no actual insight into the clouded situation.
"I see what you mean," she said. "We were engaged, but I finally decided that our marriage was impossible—because of this—my illness."
"And you told him so?"