The Marchese winced. He was a little off his guard.
“But I don’t understand. When did Anne meet this—person? She has never mentioned him to me.”
She nodded wisely.
“Of course not. Why should she mention him? The whole thing was rather an adventure, you know, for a white, woolly lamb like Anne!”
“Are you insinuating anything?” His tone was cold.
Ellen leaned her elbows comfortably upon the table, while she munched at an olive. “Now don’t get cross,” she said smoothly. “I’m only repeating what Anne told me herself. And you can hardly call that gossip, can you?”
He shook his head. “Hardly.”
“Well, it seems that this Autumn, when she was up in the Adirondacks alone with Regina, she came upon Petrovskey one day in the woods. He was wandering about, half out of his mind with fatigue. (He had escaped from the sanitarium, or was it the lunatic asylum?) She felt so sorry for him that she took him back with her to the lodge and they spent the next ten days there together.”
His pale face became crimson.
“How did Anne happen to tell you this?” The sight of the food on his plate suddenly nauseated him. He pushed it a little to one side.