"He'll be in soon; he wants to see you."
"Does he? How do you know that?" There was a look of suspicion in Hardy's eyes as they glanced up. It was a symptom of his miserable condition that he was apt to imagine slights.
"I've only his word for it, of course."
"Kathy——" he hesitated.
"Well?"
"There's something I wanted to tell him; but the fact is, I don't think I've the pluck to do it."
"Never mind, then. Tell me if you can; though I think I know, and it's all right."
"No, it isn't all right. I suppose you know he was pretty well off his head about—that cousin of mine? I rather think he owed me one for being before him, as he thought. At any rate, he cut me ever since—before I took to the flowing bowl, too. You might tell him, if you think it would be any satisfaction to him to know it, that she cared rather less for me than she did for him; in fact, I believe there was some unhappy devil that she preferred to either of us. At least a third man came into it somewhere. There may be a fourth now, for anything I know."
There was a brutality about his calmness which surprised Katherine; she could not realise the effect of the means he used for blunting his sensibilities.
"You're quite mistaken. Ted hasn't any feeling of the sort. He simply kept out of your way because he was afraid you'd think he had behaved dishonourably; and of course he couldn't explain because of—Audrey. But it wasn't his fault. He knew nothing."