The caress kindled her dull thoughts to a point of flame. She sat up and twisted the offending braid into a rigid coil.
"Walter," she said, "who is Lady Cayley?"
She noticed that the name waked him.
"Does it matter now? Can't you forget her?"
"Forget her? I know nothing about her. I want to know."
"Haven't you been told everything that was necessary?"
"I've been told nothing. It was what I heard."
There was a terrible stillness about him. Only his breath came and went unsteadily, shaken by the beating of his heart.
She quieted her own heart to listen to it; as if she could gather from such involuntary motions the thing she had to know.
"I know," she said, "I oughtn't to have heard it. And I can't believe it,—I don't, really."