“I have never even seen her,” he said, trying desperately to be commonplace; “but her husband is an old schoolfellow of mine, and I have heard much of both of them since their marriage. I am quite shocked by the news.”
“I can only repeat my regret for having spoken of it so carelessly,” said the polite consul.
“Oh, I am glad to know of it since it has happened. Poor Lady Dyke! How strange that she should die!”
Phyllis had the tact to change the conversation, and Mensmore gradually recovered his self-possession. A woman’s eyes are keener than a man often gives her credit for; and Phyllis saw quite plainly that after the first effect of the news had passed it, in some indefinable way, seemed to have a good effect on her lover. But if a woman’s intuition is seldom at fault her reasoning faculties are narrow.
Trying to arrive at a solution of the mystery attending Mensmore’s behavior, Phyllis suddenly became hot all over.
She felt furiously and inordinately jealous of a woman she did not know, and who was admittedly dead before Mensmore and she herself had met.
Hence her nose went high in the air when Bertie claimed her for the first dance.
“Who is this Lady Dyke in whom you are so deeply interested?” she said, drawing him beneath a sheltering awning.
“As I said,” replied Mensmore, “she is the wife of an old acquaintance of mine.”
“But you must have been very fond of her to feel so keenly when you heard of her death?”