"That was why."
"Walter Gore must have been very eloquent!"
Lady Frances spoke in the same even tone; but, as she felt the thrill of surprise with which Clodagh received her words, she turned quickly and decisively, and met her startled eyes.
"I always knew that Walter Gore went back with you to your hotel on that last night," she said. "I always knew that he read you a very moral lecture."
Clodagh drew a quick breath.
"But how did you know?"
Lady Frances studied her face for a moment; then she gave a direct answer to the question put to her.
"Walter himself told me," she said.
After she had spoken there was silence in the room. On her part it was the silence of the experimenter, who has taken a step in a new direction and is waiting for results; on Clodagh's, it was the silence of incredulity, of doubt, of dread. That Gore should have spoken of that last night in Venice to any third person was a circumstance that, at very least, needed explanation. She sat breathlessly waiting that explanation.
During the moment of fruitful silence Lady Frances Hope remained very still, fingering her cigarette, drawing in fitful puffs of smoke, avoiding with elaborate carelessness any observation of her companion's manner.