She'd hardly been ready for the abrupt question. It confused her.
"Your steady?" This time he nodded toward the door through which Perry had disappeared.
Jack English was almost thirty—an old man for the prize-ring—and had a family. Under his bright regard Cecille stammered, and stammered a lie.
"Yes," she said, not steadily, and very softly indeed. "Yes, my—my lad."
English nodded sagely.
"Been worried about him lately, I suppose? Bothered by what folks are saying?"
"I—I haven't heard much," she said, and this was all the truth.
"Don't you!" he advised her. "Don't you listen. And don't you believe, either."
Still that bright regard. And thereupon Cecille realized that she had been troubled deeply by one thing which she had heard. Felicity had passed it on to her.
"They say he cheated," she voiced it, wide-eyed. "That he has a—yellow streak."