"You know I'm going?" she said.
Straker said that he was sorry to hear it; by which he meant that he was sorry for Mrs. Viveash.
She began to talk to him of trifles, small occurrences at Amberley, of the affair of Mr. Higginson and Miss Probyn, and then, as by a natural transition, of Miss Tarrant.
"Do you like Miss Tarrant?" she asked suddenly, point-blank.
Straker jibbed. "Well, really—I—I haven't thought about it."
He hadn't. He knew how he stood with her, how he felt about her; but whether it amounted to liking or not liking he had not yet inquired. But that instant he perceived that he did not like her, and he lied.
"Of course I like her. Why shouldn't I?"
"Because"—she was very slow about it—"somehow I should have said that you were not that sort."
Her light on him came halting, obscured, shivering with all the vibrations of her voice; but he could see through it, down to the sources of her thinking, to something secret, luminous, and profound—her light on Philippa.
She was instantly aware of what she had let him see.