The words conveyed two meanings, and Jessica turned the conversation.
“As you are fond of music,” she said to Preston, “you must honor me again with your company the next time I have any. Men, for the most part, are such Philistines. The only ‘music’ they seem to care for is comic opera and ragtime.”
She talked more or less mechanically, for all the while her thoughts were running on the loss she had just sustained. One by one her guests of the previous night passed in review through her mind. Each was in turn carefully considered, then dismissed as being above suspicion in connection with the theft.
Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, she thought of Cora Hartsilver, and of her husband who had killed himself. Quickly Yootha Hagerston followed—she rose into the vision of her imagination with extraordinary distinctness. Both women she disliked, she reflected; and she was sure that they disliked her. And now she remembered being told—yes, Archie La Planta had told her—that Captain Preston admired the girl. Archie had said that Preston “admired her extremely.”
And that girl, and Preston himself, also Cora Hartsilver, had been trying—this Archie had also told her—to extract information from him concerning herself and her past. Could it be mere coincidence that Preston and his friend Blenkiron had called unexpectedly like this—the first time they had ever called—and that Blenkiron should have asked her questions about Australia? Who could have told him, she wondered, that her father’s name was Robertson?
“Talking of Australia,” Blenkiron’s voice held her, “your father has been dead a good many years, I suppose?”
“Ten years,” she heard herself saying; and unconsciously she wondered why she said it.
“And your mother?”
“I was quite a child when she died.”
“And they lived at Monkarra?”