“Do you want to marry her yourself?” she asked, with a bitterness that showed how deeply she was hurt.
He grinned, and wetted his thin lips with his tongue.
“You t’ink I tired goin’ by lone?” he said.
“What is your motive? Why do you choose me as a confidant?”
Figuero suddenly became dense.
“I tell you leetle bit news,” he said. “Dat is English custom. W’en we chop one–time palaver set. But you no say Figuero tole you dem t’ing.”
Rosamund did not reply. She endeavored to eat, and entered into conversation with a man near her. The Honorable Billy was ending his story.
“So I am still eligible,” he was saying. “I went to America full of hot air, and came back with cold feet. But I learned the language—eh, what?”
That night, in the drawing–room, Mrs. Laing carried out the opening move in a campaign she had mapped out for herself. If Figuero’s story were true, she would smite and spare not. If it were untrue, Evelyn would be the first to deny it, and Rosamund trusted to her own intuition to discover how far such denial might be credited.
A man who was talking to Evelyn was summoned to a bridge table, and Rosamund took his place unobtrusively.