“Have you ever met him since?”
“Yes, unfortunately. I was in London, driving through Regent Street in a hansom, when I saw him on the pavement. I stopped the cab, and asked him to come to luncheon. We have no town house, so I was staying at the Carlton alone. Yet how stupidly compromising circumstances can occasionally become! I returned to Beechcroft. I did not mention my meeting with Robert because, indeed, Giovanni and I were hardly on speaking terms. One day, in the library, I was sorting a number of accounts, when I was summoned elsewhere for a few minutes. On top of the pile was my receipted hotel bill. My husband came in, glanced at the paper, and saw a charge for a guest. When I returned he asked me whom I had been entertaining. I told him, and could not help blushing, the affair being so flagrantly absurd.”
“Is that all?”
“I declare to you, Mr. Brett, that you are now as well informed as I am myself concerning our estrangement.”
“There is, I take it, no objection on your part to the inquiry I have undertaken—the fixing of responsibility for your brother’s death, I mean?”
Margaret was silent for a few seconds before she said, in a low and steady voice:
“We are a strange race, we Hume-Frazers. Somehow I felt, when I first saw you and Davie together, that you would be bound up with a crisis in my life. I dread crises. They have ever been unfortunate for me. I cannot explain myself further. I know I am approaching an eventful epoch. Well, I am prepared. Go on with your work, in God’s name. I cannot become more unhappy than I am.”