"Eva, you are talking nonsense, and you know it." Herrick was seriously annoyed. "I imagined—foolishly—that you were a friend of Toni Rose; and it never entered my head you would say spiteful things of this sort about her."
He broke off.
"Unless——" He hesitated, his eyes full of a vague trouble.
"Well? Unless—what?"
"Oh, but that's absurd." He pulled himself together and spoke decisively. "I was going to say, unless you had some reason for speaking so; unless you knew something we don't know—and of course you don't."
"Of course not." This time the mockery in her tone was perceptible; and Herrick questioned her hastily.
"Eva, what do you mean? Do you know anything which would throw a light on Mrs. Rose's disappearance?"
But Eva had turned sulky and would say nothing more. After one or two vain attempts to induce her to speak, therefore, Herrick abandoned the idea; and Eva withdrew with a malicious little smile on her lips which rendered her husband still more uneasy.
He wandered restlessly about his small domain, puzzling his head as to what could have happened to Toni. He had not seen her often of late. Indeed, he had fancied once or twice that she was avoiding him; and he was sorry, for the girl had made an instant claim upon his sympathies, and he had often meditated over her chances of turning her marriage into a success.
Somehow he had a presentiment of evil. Something seemed to tell him that Toni's flight was premeditated, that she had fled from her home secretly, with the intention of leaving her husband for ever; and although he told himself that the idea was monstrous, grotesque, he could not shake it off.