Sally, now entirely divested of her masquerade, resignedly shrugged herself into the black silk cloak for lack of a better negligee.
"I don't understand what you can suspect," she said dubiously.
"I don't suspect anything; but I'm going to find out everything."
"But aren't you afraid--"
"Of what, pray'?" Mrs. Gosnold demanded with appropriate asperity.
"I mean, don't you think he'll know?"
"Nothing in the shadow of those trees, with my mask and that cape to disguise the fact that I'm a bit more matronly than yourself--worse luck!"
"But your voice--"
"Haven't you ever read about 'guarded accents' in novels? Those will be mine, precisely, when I talk to my graceless nephew. I shan't speak once above a whisper--and I defy any man to tell my whisper from yours or any other woman's for that matter. Don't flatter yourself, my dear! I shall fool him perfectly; there's precious little to choose between any two women in the dark!"
Already she was almost finished dressing, and as yet Sally hadn't had a chance to breathe a word about her own information.