"Lest evil rumors might dishonor my husband."
"But where was the dishonor to me in my wife knowing this poor lad, Greeba?"
At that she hesitated a moment, and then in a tone of gentle reproof she said, nestling close to him and caressing his sleeve, "Michael, why do you ask such questions?"
But he did not turn aside for that, but looked searchingly into her face, and said, "He was nothing to you, was he?"
She hesitated again, and then tried to laugh, "Why, what should he be to me?" she said.
He did not flinch, but repeated, "He was nothing to you then?"
"Nobody save my husband has ever been anything to me," she said, with a caress.
"He was nothing to you—no?"
"No," she answered, throwing back her head.
Just then the English maid came to say that the six big Englishmen who had been there before were in the kitchen again, and asking to see her master, not her mistress, this time. In an instant Greeba's little burst of disdain was spent, and she was all humility and entreaty.