“That’s just what I mean.”
“How long had you known him?”
“Something like three months.”
“Were you friends?”
“The best of friends. I supposed, in fact, that we were to become something more,” Kate significantly added.
“You mean?”
“In other words, Mr. Carter, I supposed that Cyrus Darling was going to marry me, and that I should roll in wealth for the rest of my life. Imagine my chagrin, dismay, and disappointment, therefore, when I learned that he had killed himself—and that a wife was mourning his tragic end. Perdition! I could have cut off my two ears for having listened to his treacherous love avowals.”
Nick Carter now saw plainly that this woman had no intention of bolting, that she had taken a position she felt sure she could maintain, and that she was not to be easily frightened or intimidated. All this appeared in her darkly glowing eyes, her look of covert contempt and defiance, and in the utter lack of anything like apprehension on her part. Nick gazed at her intently for a moment, then asked bluntly:
“Do you expect me to believe, Miss Crandall, that you did not know Darling was married?”
“I don’t care whether you believe it, Mr. Carter, or not,” she deliberately answered, meeting him eye to eye while she lighted a cigarette. “What is that to me? The fact is not altered by what you believe.”