"There is one circumstance that took place while I was at Stammars," she began, "which I have sometimes thought since I ought to have mentioned to your ladyship at the time. To-day I regret more than ever that I omitted to do so."
"To what circumstance do you allude, Miss Deane?"
"Your ladyship must please to pardon the question, but did it never strike you, did you never notice, that there was some hidden understanding between Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy?"
"Good gracious. Miss Deane, whatever do you mean?"
Lady Dudgeon was surprised for the moment out of her assumed equability.
"To put the case in plain language, and it will perhaps be best to do so," said Olive, "has your ladyship never had reason to suspect that Miss Lloyd and Mr. Pomeroy were engaged to each other?"
"Impossible! such a thing is utterly impossible!" was Lady Dudgeon's emphatic reply. "I know Miss Lloyd too well to believe anything of the kind. For once, Miss Deane, your surmises have led you altogether astray."
"Possibly so; I hope so," said Olive, resignedly.
There was an awkward silence. Her ladyship fidgeted, but said nothing. Singular to say, she seemed far more put out by what Olive had just said to her than by the far more important disclosure that had been made to her half an hour previously.
"You--you mentioned some circumstance," she said at last, not without a touch of irritation. She felt as though Olive were doing her a personal injury.