“Why?” I asked, perhaps unwisely.
“Why—well, that’s my own affair,” he snapped. “I have reasons for saying so,” he almost snarled.
At that moment the man-servant came to take our soup plates and served the fish with almost religious ceremony—“sole Morny” it was.
Suddenly my host laughed, a deep, rippling laugh.
“Well, after all, Yelverton, you’ve been badly bamboozled, haven’t you? You thought young Audley was dead, and that dainty little woman was free to marry you. But he’s evidently turned up again. Yes—I realize the disappointing situation from your point of view. Absolutely rotten!” and he laughed merrily. He had apparently recovered his usual self-possession.
But the change I had noted had set every nerve in my body keenly on the alert. I remembered how his face had changed, the sudden, sullen contraction of his brows, his anxiety that was obvious no matter how he tried to hide it. Of course I could not understand his sudden mistrust of his friend, Feng. Perhaps, after all, the old doctor had some hidden motive for concealing the fact that bride and bridegroom had met again after those many months of inexplicable separation, and that his silence was not merely accidental. Still, it was clear Humphreys did not think so.
“I thought that the doctor would certainly have told you of Audley’s reappearance,” I remarked. “Indeed, when you rang me up I was at once extremely anxious to see you and hear your opinion of the whole situation.”
“You want my opinion,” he said in a hard tone—a voice quite changed. “Well, as you know, I thought you a fool from the first. You ought never to have had anything to do with the affair. It was far too dangerous.”
“But why dangerous? Tell me.”
“Well—it was—that’s all. You told me of the warning and of the attempt upon you. But tell me more of Feng—of what his housekeeper told you,” he urged, rising, taking a bottle of white wine from the big carved side-board and pouring out a glass for me and for himself. “This is very interesting.”