"What made you think of such a thing?" she asked.
"The look in his eyes when I saw him at your house, and your evident liking for each other."
I felt how incongruous my words were, how utterly out of keeping with the scenes of sorrow I had witnessed that day; but, as I said, a spirit of madness was upon me.
"Men are such fools," was her reply.
"Yes, they are. But we cannot help that. Men were born to be fooled by women. But surely Mr. Barcroft is a happy man now if what rumor says is true."
"And what does rumor say?"
"That he is favored above all other men," I replied. "That Miss Lethbridge has consented to make him happy."
"Was it not Shakespeare who said that 'rumor was a lying jade'?" And again she laughed, as I thought, flippantly, heartlessly. "Poor man, I cannot help what he feels."
I felt that her words were those of a vulgar woman, and yet, as she stood there that day, with the early spring sunlight shining upon her, her face flushed with the hue of health, her eyes shining brightly, I had never seen any one so beautiful.
"And is rumor a lying jade in this instance?" I asked.