“Then you really were on board the Sans Souci at Cowes, Miss Dane?” she began, with a friendly smile.
“Yes,” said Evelyn, at a loss to determine why her brief sojourn in the Solent should attract such widespread attention.
“And you met Captain Warden there?”
The attack was so direct and unexpected that the younger woman blushed and flinched from it. Still, she was not to be drawn into admissions like a frightened child.
“I met several people on the island,” she said. “Cowes is a crowded place during regatta week.”
“Oh, come now,” purred the smiling Rosamund, “one does not forget a man of Arthur Warden’s type so readily—and after a violent flirtation, too! You see, I know all about it. Little birds whisper these things. Arthur did not tell me when he came to see me in town. Of course, he wouldn’t, but there are always kind–hearted people willing enough to gossip if they think they are annoying one.”
There was sufficient innuendo in this brief speech to justify Mrs. Laing’s worst estimate of scandal–mongers. Not one barbed shaft missed its mark. If words could wound, then Evelyn must have succumbed, but the injuries they inflict are not always visible, and she kept a stiff upper lip, though her heart raced in wild tumult.
“The inference is that you are far more interested in Captain Warden’s visits to Cowes than I or any other person can pretend to be,” she said slowly.