"Nothing," she replied truthfully, for she was entirely at a loss to fit this new development into the adventures of Lyttleton and the lighted window--and make sense of it. "I can't imagine--"
"What I want to know is this," Trego propounded cunningly: "had Lyttleton anything to do with it?" She had prepared for that question, had settled her answer beforehand; even with any real reason to suspect Lyttleton of complicity in something underhand, she would not have betrayed him to this man--if to anybody.
"I'm sure I can't say."
"Well--it's funny, anyhow. Guess we better not say anything about it. After all, it's no concern of ours."
She couldn't refrain from the question: "But why should you think he--?"
"Well, what was he doing all that time--?"
He checked and stammered with embarrassment. "I beg your pardon!"
"You needn't. He wasn't--with me--all that time."
The situation grown intolerable, Sally got up suddenly and without a word of excuse took her scarlet cheeks out of the dining-room and back to her bedchamber.
On the dot of their standing appointment she found Mrs. Gosnold unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less strikingly posed in the golden glow of her boudoir window for the portrait of a lady of quality on fatigue duty--very much at her ease in a lavender-silk morning gown and stretched out in a chaise longue, a tray with fruit, coffee and rolls on her left dividing attention with a sheaf of morning notes on the other side and the portable writing-case on her knees.