Mrs. Oke shook her head. "No one," she replied.
There was a pause.
"Who was it, then, that was walking with you near the pond, about five o'clock?" asked Oke slowly.
His wife lifted her eyes straight to his and answered contemptuously—
"No one was walking with me near the pond, at five o'clock or any other hour."
Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curious hoarse noise like a man choking.
"I—I thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice," he brought out with an effort; adding, for the sake of appearances before me, "I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for me."
Mrs. Oke smiled.
"I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this afternoon," she said slowly. "If you saw any one with me, it must have been Lovelock, for there certainly was no one else."
And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her mind some delightful but too evanescent impression.