To his amazement the face of the girl in front of him changed. She had been calm and half smiling. Now astonishment, consciousness, and something like panic showed in her eyes, her suddenly taut body.
“Does she say that? How did she know?” There was a little moan of dismay in Freda’s answer.
Gage’s face grew stern. He sat looking at the girl across from him, whose eyes were closed as if in pain.
“To lay her hands on that,” said Freda, under her breath.
“I don’t understand you,” said Gage rather curtly.
She lifted her face.
“It hurts to have any one know that—but for her to know it most of all.”
“Such things are usually public knowledge sooner or later, my dear young lady. Clandestine—”
“Don’t say that,” cried Freda, her voice rising, “don’t use that word.”
And then as if some gate had been opened her words poured out. “Can’t you understand something being too beautiful to be anything except secret? It was something I couldn’t have let even those who love me know about. And to have her ugly devastating hands on it! It soils it. I feel her finger marks all over me. It was mine and she’s stolen it.”