“I suppose I was mistaken, but his face and voice both seemed quite familiar to me,” she remarked. “I meant to tell you before, but it entirely slipped my memory. The likeness to some one I have met was very striking, but I cannot recollect where I’ve met him before. Is he an official messenger?”
“Yes,” answered her lover vaguely, although alarmed that she should so nearly have recognised Cator; “he’s attached to the Foreign Office. I urged him to stay the night, but he was compelled to return at once to town.”
“And he brought you some bad news? Admit the truth, dear.”
“He certainly brought some official intelligence that was not altogether reassuring,” her lover said.
“Are you quite certain that it was official, and did not concern yourself?” she asked in a low voice which sounded to him full of suspicion.
“Certain? Why, of course,” he laughed. “Whatever strange ideas are you entertaining, Claudia?”
“Well,” she answered, “to tell the truth, Dudley, I have a notion that he came to see you on some private business, because ever since that night you have been a changed man.”
“I really had no idea that. I had changed,” he said. “You surely don’t mean that I have changed towards you?”
“Yes,” she answered gravely, her small hand trembling slightly in his nervous grasp,—“yes, I think you have changed—even towards me.”