“Care!” she said, “of course I care,” then added with a laugh, “A woman can never bear to be disapproved of. I suppose I must have been asleep.”
“Like a baby,” said her husband, with his laugh of emotion, “and very nice you looked, my dear, but utterly tired out.”
“Yes, I was very tired,” she acknowledged. “I have done nothing but run about, and then wait, which was still worse. And then—” She sat up suddenly throwing off her coverings. “James! you know—how did you know?”
“Tell me first,” he said. “It is very little I know—and then I will tell you.”
“That is a bargain,” she answered smiling, and then with many interruptions of remark and commentary, she told him her story: Rankin’s hint, and Marion’s first of all.
“Marion! Marion told you that?” he cried in amazement.
“She told me nothing. I do not for a moment suppose that she knew anything,” cried Evelyn, scenting another danger, “but she is very keen-witted, and must have felt that if there was a mystery—”
“A great deal too keen-witted, the little—” The substantive intended to come in here was a profane one, and Rowland felt on his side a danger too.
“And then I had all the trouble in the world to see him. I almost forced an entrance at last, and by the threat of invading him in his own room—indeed,” said Evelyn, “it was not a threat only, I should have gone to his room, as I could find him no other where. But the threat sufficed and he came. James! the boy has committed a great crime, but oh my heart is sore for Eddy. He has no mother.”
“You think you might have been his mother, Evelyn?”