’You mean, you are glad if she has married somebody else, and not your brother?’

‘Yes, I am glad of that.’

Beatrice mused, with wrinkles at the corner of her eye.  Then, fixing Nancy with a very keen look, she said quietly: 

’I’m not sure that she’s married.  But if she isn’t, no doubt she ought to be.’

On Nancy’s part there was a nervous movement, but she said nothing.  Her face grew rigid.

‘I have an idea who the man is,’ Miss.  French pursued; ’but I can’t be quite certain.  One has heard of similar cases.  Even you have, no doubt?’

‘I don’t care to talk about it,’ fell mechanically from Nancy’s lips, which had lost their colour.

‘But I’ve come just for that purpose.’

The eyes of mocking scrutiny would not be resisted.  They drew a gaze from Nancy, and then a haughty exclamation.

’I don’t understand you.  Please say whatever you have to say in plain words.’

’Don’t be angry with me.  You were always too ready at taking offence.  I mean it in quite a friendly way; you can trust me; I’m not one of the women that chatter.  Don’t you think you ought to sympathise a little with Fanny?  She has gone to Brussels, or somewhere about there.  But she might have gone down into Cornwall —­to a place like Falmouth.  It was quite far enough off—­don’t you think?’

Nancy was stricken mute, and her countenance would no longer disguise what she suffered.

‘No need to upset yourself,’ pursued the other in smiling confidence.  ’I mean no harm.  I’m curious, that’s all; just want to know one or two things.  We’re old friends, and whatever you tell me will go no further, depend upon that.’

‘What do you mean?’

The words came from lips that moved with difficulty.  Beatrice, still smiling, bent forward.

‘Is it any one that I know?’

‘Any one—?  Who—?’

‘That made it necessary for you to go down into Cornwall, my dear.’

Nancy heaved a sigh, the result of holding her breath too long.  She half rose, and sat down again.  In a torture of flashing thoughts, she tried to determine whether Beatrice had any information, or spoke conjecturally.  Yet she was able to discern that either case meant disaster; to have excited the suspicions of such a person, was the same as being unmasked; an inquiry at Falmouth, and all would at once be known.

No, not all.  Not the fact of her marriage; not the name of her husband.

Driven to bay by such an opponent, she assumed an air wholly unnatural to her—­one of cynical effrontery.

‘You had better say what you know.’

‘All right.  Who was the father of the child born not long ago?’

‘That’s asking a question.’

‘And telling what I know at the same time.  It saves breath.’

Beatrice laughed; and Nancy, become a mere automaton, laughed too.