"There is a Miss Stanley who visited at the new manor last summer—any relation, do you know?" asked Mr. Ewart.
"Same," Jamie answered concisely, meanwhile puffing vigorously at his pipe.
"The plot thickens, Mrs. Macleod," said the Doctor dubiously.
"Is she tall and slender and fair, Jamie?" I put what I considered an opportune question; I knew it would both surprise and irritate him as well as rouse his curiosity of which he has an abundance. I really spoke at a venture because the name recalled to me the two girls in the sleeping-car and their destination: Richelieu-en-Bas.
He turned to me with irony in his look. "She is all you say. May I make so bold as to enquire of you whether you speak from knowledge, or if you simply made a good guess?"
"From knowledge—first hand, of course," I said with assurance.
He sat up then, eyeing me defiantly, much to the others' amusement.
"Perhaps you can give me further information about the young lady—all will be gratefully received."
"No, nothing—except that I believe it was she through whom you obtained Cale, was n't it?" I heard Cale chuckle.
"Look here, Marcia," he began severely enough, then burst into one of his hearty laughs that dissolves his irritation at once; "you 'll be telling me what she wrote me in my last letter if you 're such a mind reader. I say," he said, settling himself into a chair beside me, "let up on a man once in a while in the presence of such a cloud of witnesses, won't you? Take me when I 'm alone. The truth is, Ewart, Marcia gives herself airs because she is three years my senior. She takes the meanest kind of advantage; and I can't hit back because she 's a woman. But about that telephone, Ewart; are they going to run it on the trees."