She bowed, but said nothing. His words reassured her on one point, while filling her with a vague uneasiness. The sunshade she held over her head was lined with pink; it served its purpose in preventing the Baronet from detecting how pale and wan was the face under it.
They began to pace the walk slowly side by side.
‘Equally with others, Lady Dimsdale, you are aware that, by a strange turn of fortune, Mr Boyd’s wife, whom he believed to have been dead for several years, has this morning reappeared?’
‘You were in the parlour, Sir Frederick, when I was introduced to Mrs Boyd only half an hour ago.’ She answered him coldly and composedly enough; but he could not tell how her heart was beating.
‘Strangely enough, I happened to be in New Orleans about the time of Mr Boyd’s marriage, and I know more about the facts of that unhappy affair than he has probably told to any one in England. It is enough to say that the reappearance of this woman is the greatest misfortune that could have happened to him. Oscar Boyd was a miserable man before he parted from her—he will be ten times more miserable in years to come.’
‘You have not asked me to meet you here, Sir Frederick, in order to tell me this?’
‘This, and something more, Lady Dimsdale. Listen!’ He laid one finger lightly on the sleeve of his companion’s dress, as if to emphasise her attention. ‘I happen to be acquainted with a certain secret—it matters not how it came into my possession—the telling of which—and it could be told in half-a-dozen words—would relieve Mr Boyd of this woman at once and for ever, would make a free man of him, as free to marry as in those old days when he used to haunt that vicarage garden which I too remember so well!’
Lady Dimsdale stopped in her walk and stared at him with wide-open eyes. ‘You—possess—a secret that could do all this!’
‘I have stated no more than the simple truth.’
‘Then Mr Boyd is not this woman’s husband?’ The question burst from her lips swiftly, impetuously. Next moment her eyes fell and a tell-tale blush suffused her cheeks. But here again the pink-lined sunshade came to her rescue.