“Perhaps I am going crazy—I really don't understand what you are talking about.”
Mrs. Hardacre leant forward in her chair and drew a long breath. A gleam of intelligence came into her eyes as she looked at Norma.
“Do you mean to say you don't know what the row was about before the man fired the shot?”
“No,” said Norma, blankly.
Her mother fell back in her chair and laughed. It was the first moment of enjoyment she had experienced since Stone's black figure had appeared on the terrace. Reaction from strain caused the laughter to ring somewhat sharply. Norma regarded her with an anxious frown.
“Please tell me exactly what you mean.”
“My dear child—it's too funny. I thought you would have been too clever to be taken in by a man like this. I see, you've been imagining him a Galahad—a sort of spotless prophet—though what use you can have for such persons I can't make out. Well, this is what happened.” Embellishing the story here and there with little spiteful adornments, she described with fair accuracy, however, the scene that had occurred. Norma listened stonily.
“This is true?” she asked when her mother had finished.
“Ask any one who was there—your father—Morland.”
“I can't believe it. He is not that sort of man.”