Daisy hesitated.  She was assailed by sudden misgiving.  Was it all a ruse?  She did not trust Major Hunt-Goring.  She believed him fully capable of vindictiveness, and yet, so subtle had been his strategy, he had not seemed vindictive.  He had repeated the story idly in the first place, and, finding she took it seriously, he had advised her to hold her peace.  No, she would do him justice at least.  She was convinced that he had not been deliberately malicious in this case.  It had not been his intention to work evil.

“Tell me what he said!” said Olga.

Her tone was imperative; yet Daisy still hesitated.  “Do you know, dear, I don’t think I will,” she said.

“Please—­you must!” said Olga, with decision.  “It concerns me as much as it does him.”

“I am not sure that it really concerns either of you,” Daisy said.  “It was just a piece of gossip which may—­or may not—­have had any foundation.”

“Still, tell me!” Olga insisted.  “Forewarned is fore-armed, isn’t it?  And things do get so distorted sometimes, don’t they?”

“Well, dear—­” Daisy was beginning to wish herself well out of the matter—­“it is not a pretty story.  You and Nick may possibly have heard of it.  Quite possibly you know it to be untrue.  Major Hunt-Goring told me it was sheer gossip, and he would not vouch for the truth of it.  It concerned the death of your friend Violet Campion.”

“Ah!” said Olga.  She breathed the word rather than uttered it.  All the colour went out of her face.  “Go on!” she whispered.  “Go on!”

“You know the tale?” said Daisy.

“Tell me!” said Olga.

Reluctantly Daisy complied.  “It was whispered that there had been an understanding between them, that the poor girl went mad with trouble, and that—­to protect himself from scandal—­he gave her a draught that ended her life.”

Briefly, baldly, fell the words, spoken in an undertone, with evident unwillingness.  They went out into silence, a silence that had in it something dreadful, something that no words could express.

It was many seconds before Daisy ventured a look at the girl’s face, though her arm was still about her.  When she did, she was shocked.  For Olga was gazing straight before her with eyes wide and glassy—­the eyes of the sleep-walker who stares upon visions of horror which no others see.

As Daisy moved, she moved also, went to the window, stepped straight out into the night.  Dumbly Daisy watched her.  She had obeyed her instinct in speaking, but now she knew not what to say or do.

Slowly at length Olga turned.  She came back into the room.  The glassy look had gone out of her eyes.  She appeared quite normal.  She went to Daisy, and laid gentle hands upon her shoulders.

“You did quite right to tell me,” she said.  “It is something that I certainly ought to know.”

Her face was deathly, but she smiled bravely into Daisy’s troubled eyes.