I think she gave a little bitter laugh. At any rate, there was the echo of it in her tone, as she said, with sardonic promptness: “How can I be going home to marry you, when—when I never knew till within half an hour that you—that you cared anything about me?” I, too, must have laughed, the statement struck me as so absurd. “What? You never knew—?” She shook her head with an emphasis almost violent. “You may have known,” she said, in that voice which, after all, could not be called bitter, for the reason that it was reproachful, “but I’d come to the conclusion that”—she tried to carry the situation off with a second laugh, a laugh that ended as something like a sob—“that you didn’t.” I leaned down toward her, speaking the words right into her face. “Didn’t care?” She nodded silently. “For God’s sake, what made you think that?” “Oh—everything!” “Everything? When? How?” She was doing her best to convey the impression that it didn’t matter. “Everything—always—in New York—at Atlantic City—there especially! And lately—” “Yes? Lately?” “Lately—at Taplow.” “But at Taplow—how? In Heaven’s name—how?” “Oh, I was in and out of your room.” “So I understand; but what of that?” “Nothing; nothing; only—only what I saw.” “Well, what did you see?” Instead of answering this question at once she shifted her ground. “If you cared—as you say—why didn’t you tell some one?” “Tell some one? Who could I tell?” “Oh, any one. Lady Rideover, for one. She’d made a promise not to mention me; but you hadn’t.” “But why should I have mentioned you when I never supposed she had any notion—” “But you see that’s it. If you’d cared—so much—you’d have done it—to one of your sisters or the other. But you didn’t—not to either; and so they got the idea—” “Yes? What idea did they get? Go on. Tell me.” I noticed that she was twisting and untwisting her fingers, and that she had begun throwing me quick, nervous glances through the half-light. “It’s no use telling you, because it doesn’t matter. That is, it doesn’t matter now. Everything’s—arranged.” “We’ll talk about that later. I want to know what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.” “They didn’t get it exactly. They were only beginning to get it when I made them understand that I was going back to be—Oh, why do you make me talk about it? Why do you bring it all up now, when it can’t do any good?” To get at the facts I was obliged to speak with the severity one uses toward a difficult child. “I want you to tell me what idea Mabel and Evelyn got.” “Isn’t it perfectly evident what idea they’d get? Any one would get it when you—when you never said a word—not the least, little, confidential word—and you so ill!—and blind!—and to your own sisters!—and that Miss Farley there!” I passed over the reference to Miss Farley because I couldn’t see what it meant. I had enough to do in seizing the new suggestion that had come to me. “They didn’t think—they couldn’t have thought—that there was nothing on my side.”