"'It was rather odd, wasn't it, Jim?'"
"Yes—and tried not to. But it was no use; I seemed to see you laughing at me under every helmet in Grenville's plates. It was rather odd, wasn't it, Jim? And to think—to think that now——"
Her smile grew vaguer; she dropped her head thoughtfully and rested one hand on the library table, where once her catalogue notes had been piled up—where once Elena's letter to her husband had fallen from Clydesdale's heavy hand.
Then, gradually into her remote gaze came something else, something Desboro had learned to dread; and she raised her head abruptly and gazed straight at him with steady, questioning eyes in which there was a hint of trouble of some kind—perhaps unbelief.
"I suppose you are going to your office," she said.
"After I have taken you to yours, dear."
"You will be at leisure before I am, won't you?"
"Unless you knock off work at four o'clock. Can you?"