“I know what it was,” he said, with determination; “any information from you will only second what I possess already.”
The lips flew open with an eager, “How do you know?”
“Don’t you suppose I see and hear a good deal in going about this steamer?”
“But you couldn’t have heard this morning,” she said, cunningly, “because he asked me to come away from the deck cabins, and there wasn’t a soul in the music-room. So how could you hear?”
“Does he not talk to other people?”
“No,” she said, promptly. “He said he wouldn’t for the world. You’re just pretending you’ve heard things.”
Captain Fordyce immediately abandoned this set of tactics for another. “I should think,” he said, gravely, “that a wife’s sense of honour would prevent her from listening to insinuations against her husband.”
A deeper cloud overshadowed her mobile face. “That’s just the trouble, ’Steban. He hinted and suggested. If he had said things right out, wouldn’t I have been mad with him!”
“What were the insinuations?”
“There—I’ve been telling you,” she said, penitently, “and I said I wouldn’t. I sha’n’t say another word.”