Verrian did not notice him. He found it more important to say: “She’s so loyal to Mrs. Westangle that she wouldn’t have wished, in Mrs. Westangle’s interest, to have her presence, or her agency in what is going on, known; but, of course, if Mrs. Westangle chooses to, tell it, that’s her affair.”
“She would have had to tell it, sooner or later, Mrs. Westangle would; and she only told it to Miss Macroyd this afternoon on compulsion, after Miss Macroyd and I had seen you in the wood-road, and Mrs. Westangle had to account for the young lady’s presence there in your company. Then Miss Macroyd had to tell me; but I assure you, my dear fellow, the matter hasn’t gone any further.”
“Oh, it’s quite indifferent to me,” Verrian retorted. “I’m nothing but a dispassionate witness of the situation.”
“Of course,” Bushwick assented, and then he added, with a bonhomie really so amiable that a man with even an unreasonable grudge could hardly resist it, “If you call it dispassionate.”
Verrian could not help laughing. “Well, passionate, then. I don’t know why it should be so confoundedly vexatious. But somehow I would have chosen Miss Macroyd—Is she specially dear to you?”
“Not the least!”
“I would have chosen her as the last person to have the business, which is so inexpressibly none of my business—”
“Or mine, as I think you remarked,” Bushwick interposed.
“Come out through,” Verrian concluded, accepting his interposition with a bow.
“I see what you mean,” Bushwick said, after a moment’s thought. “But, really, I don’t think it’s likely to go further. If you want to know, I believe Miss Macroyd feels the distinction of being in the secret so much that she’ll prefer to hint round till Mrs. Westangle gives the thing away. She had to tell me, because I was there with her when she saw you with the young lady, to keep me from going with my curiosity to you. Come, I do think she’s honest about it.”