“Then the investigation is actually dropped?” she exclaimed, unable to further conceal her anxiety.
“I presume it is,” I replied.
Her chest heaved slightly, and slowly fell again. By its movement I knew that my answer allowed her to breathe more freely.
“You also believe that your friend Jevons has been compelled, owing to negative results, to relinquish his efforts?” she asked.
“Such is my opinion. But I have not seen him lately in order to consult him.”
In silence she listened to my answer, and was evidently reassured by it; yet I could not, for the life of me, understand her manner—at one moment nervous and apprehensive, and at the next full of an almost imperious self-confidence. At times the expression in her eyes was such as justified her mother in the fears she had expressed to me. I tried to diagnose her symptoms, but they were too complicated and contradictory.
She spoke again of her sister, returning to the main point upon which she had sought the interview. She was a decidedly attractive woman, with a face rendered more interesting by her widow’s garb.
But why was she masquerading so cleverly? For what reason had old Courtenay contrived to efface his identity so thoroughly? As I looked at her, mourning for a man who was alive and well, I utterly failed to comprehend one single fact of the astounding affair. It staggered belief!
“Let me speak candidly to you, Ralph,” she said, after we had been discussing Ethelwynn for some little time. “As you may readily imagine, I have my sister’s welfare very much at heart, and my only desire is to see her happy and comfortable, instead of pining in melancholy as she now is. I ask you frankly, have you quarrelled?”
“No, we have not,” I answered promptly.