He looked at her quickly, but he was not quick enough to catch the spiteful gleam in her eyes.
“Would it be inquisitive to enquire why?” he said.
“I don’t think Mr. Romayne is a nice young man,” was the answer. “I would rather people I like——” She broke off in pretty confusion. “I would rather you weren’t a friend of his, Mr. Loring. I think there’s a great deal about him that nobody knows.”
“Indeed!” said Loring, interrogatively and quietly.
“You see,” she said, with charming seriousness, “I think a girl can often feel whether a man is nice or nasty quicker than another man can. Mr. Loring, has Mr. Romayne ever said anything to you—Oh, please don’t think it’s very odd of me to say such things to you! Has he ever said anything that made you think he might be married?”
There was a hardly perceptible pause—a hardly perceptible flash of comprehension on Loring’s face, and the vindictive satisfaction in his eyes deepened.
“What makes you ask me that?” he said, in a tone which seemed to fence gravely with the suggestion rather than to repudiate it.
Miss Pomeroy responded with growing conviction.
“Because I’m quite sure that he is married. And, of course, as he doesn’t own it, there must be something—something not nice about it. And it does seem to me so wrong that people should like him so much when he isn’t a bit what they think he is.”