Moreton laughed.
"They all are that way—it's a part of woman's nature to be inexplicable, don't you know, deuced inexplicable. Now there's that Miss Crabb: I never saw such an enigma. She's a man and a woman and a little school-girl, all in one."
Reynolds got up from his chair and began walking to and fro, his head thrown back, his hands clasped behind him. He frowned and pressed his lips over his cigar so that deep furrows came on each side of his mouth.
"Being in love appears to render you gloomy," Moreton lightly exclaimed, as he glanced into his friend's face. "Love is like wine, it makes some men surly whilst it makes others merry. Now I——"
Reynolds waved his hand impatiently and said almost abruptly:
"If she really loved her husband, in the first place, it must have been a dreadful ordeal she went through."
"Oh, she must have been very young, scarcely more than a child," said Moreton, as if hurrying to relieve Reynolds, if he could; "and I should think she has outgrown it in a great degree, by this time. She seems quite cheerful and in superb health."
Reynolds turned as he came near the middle of the room, and facing Moreton, appeared on the point of saying some momentous thing. A gloomy cloud of excitement had settled on his countenance. His lips faltered at the point of speech, and with a strange smile he resumed his pacing to and fro. Moreton's eyes followed him with a look of puzzled interest. Presently he laughed outright and exclaimed chaffingly:
"You make me think of that little girl of White's when you look like that, Reynolds. Your eyes are for all the world like hers, with those mysterious sad shadows in them. What the deuce is the matter?"
Reynolds' countenance changed abruptly; he essayed to laugh, but there was no sincerity in the effort. He shook his head and answered: