Robert’s face changed. “But till that day at the Priory——” he began.
Cecily’s eyes suddenly fell. She turned her head aside, with a sort of unbearable shame. “Robert!” she urged in a low voice, “don’t try to deceive me any more. Before that day at the Priory you had seen her constantly—every day, in fact, for months.”
He looked at her uncertainly. “And you knew this—all the time?”
“Not all the time. Not till a few days before you took rooms for her in the village, and then only by the strangest chance.”
There was a silence. Robert broke it in a curious, shamed voice.
“Cecily, I swear to you that Miss Burton and I were only friends.”
She stood tracing figures on the shelf of the mantelpiece with her forefinger. When she spoke it was very quietly.
“You should be careful where you make love to your friends, Robert. The garden is a more or less public place.”
He started, then began to pace the room.
“Cecily!” he urged. “Listen——”