My eyes had been meeting hers without, as it were, hers quite meeting mine. But at this there had to be intercourse. "By my husband." It pulled _me_ up a trifle. "Brissenden knows?" She hesitated; then, as if at my tone, gave a laugh. "Don't you suppose I've told him?" I really couldn't but admire her. "Ah--so you _have_ talked!" It didn't confound her. "One's husband isn't talk. You're cruel moreover," she continued, "to my joke. It was Briss, poor dear, who talked--though, I mean, only to me. _He_ knows." I cast about. "Since when?" But she had it ready. "Since this evening." Once more I couldn't but smile. "Just in time then! And the _way_ he knows----?" "Oh, the way!"--she had at this a slight drop. But she came up again. "I take his word." "You haven't then asked him?" "The beauty of it was--half an hour ago, upstairs--that I _hadn't_ to ask. He came out with it himself, and _that_--to give you the whole thing--was, if you like, my moment. He dropped it on me," she continued to explain, "without in the least, sweet innocent, knowing what he was doing; more, at least, that is, than give her away." "Which," I concurred, "was comparatively nothing!" But she had no ear for irony, and she made out still more of her story. "He's simple--but he sees." "And when he sees"--I completed the picture--"he luckily tells." She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He has seen, in short; there comes some chance when one does. His, as luckily as you please, came this evening. If you ask me what it showed him you ask more than _I've_ either cared or had time to ask. Do you consider, for that matter"--she put it to me--"that one does ask?" As her high smoothness--such was the wonder of this reascendancy--almost deprived me of my means, she was wise and gentle with me. "Let us leave it alone." I fairly, while my look at her turned rueful, scratched my head. "Don't you think it a little late for that?" "Late for everything!" she impatiently said. "But there you are." I fixed the floor. There indeed I was. But I tried to stay there--just there only--as short a time as possible. Something, moreover, after all, caught me up. "But if Brissenden already knew----?" "If he knew----?" She still gave me, without prejudice to her ingenuity--and indeed it was a part of this--all the work she could. "Why, that Long and Lady John were thick?" "Ah, then," she cried, "you admit they _are_!" "Am I not admitting everything you tell me? But the more I admit," I explained, "the more I must understand. It's _to_ admit, you see, that I inquire. If Briss came down with Lady John yesterday to oblige Mr. Long----" "He didn't come," she interrupted, "to oblige Mr. Long!" "Well, then, to oblige Lady John herself----" "He didn't come to oblige Lady John herself!" "Well, then, to oblige his clever wife----"