The Professor looked at me in surprise.
“I was instructing your wife in some of the mysteries of salmon-fishing,” he said. “She tells me you have a salmon-river running through your grounds.”
I laughed uneasily.
“So you are a fisherman as well as a romantic theorist!” I said, rather rudely. “How I wish I were as versatile! Come, Margot, we must be going now. The carriage ought to be here.”
She rose quietly and bade the Professor good-night; but as she glanced up at me, in rising, I fancied I caught a new expression in her eyes. A ray of determination, of set purpose, mingled with the gloomy fire of their despair.
As soon as we were in the carriage I spoke, with a strained effort at ease and the haphazard tone which should mask furtive cross-examination.
“Professor Black is an interesting man,” I said.
“Do you think so?” she answered from her dark corner.
“Surely. His intellect is really alive. Yet, with all his scientific knowledge and his power of eliciting facts and elucidating them, he is but a feather headed man.” I paused, but she made no answer. “Do you not think so?”
“How can I tell?” she replied. “We only talked about fishing. He managed to make that topic a pleasant one.”