"Yes," he said, "tells you what?"
She looked at him with a quizzical smile.
"That Sir Edward Parkington will never settle in the Colonies," she replied.
He thought of the dead man, in the grave by the seashore, near St. Mary's.
"Sir Edward is quite content with his present abode," he said, and laughed.
"Yes, for a time," thinking he referred to Hedgely Hall.
"For all time, and eternity, too."
"Am I to take that as compliment?" she asked.
"Not as a compliment—as the simple truth," he answered, very seriously,—too seriously, indeed, for it did not ring quite true, and she detected it.
"I fear that you equivocate," she cried. "You mean something which you do not say."