“Oh, my dear–if you think that, in such a complicated matter, every day, every hour, doesn’t more or less modify one’s surest sureness!”
“That’s just what I’m driving at. I want to know what has modified yours.”
She made a slight gesture of impatience. “What does it matter, now the thing’s done? I don’t know that I could give any clear reason…”
He got to his feet and stood looking down on her with a tormented brow. “But it’s absolutely necessary that you should.”
At his tone her impatience flared up. “It’s not necessary that I should give you any explanation whatever, since you’ve taken the matter out of my hands. All I can say is that I was trying to help you: that no other thought ever entered my mind.” She paused a moment and then added: “If you doubted it, you were right to do what you’ve done.”
“Oh, I never doubted you!” he retorted, with a fugitive stress on the pronoun. His face had cleared to its old look of trust. “Don’t be offended if I’ve seemed to,” he went on. “I can’t quite explain myself, either…it’s all a kind of tangle, isn’t it? That’s why I thought I’d better speak at once; or rather why I didn’t think at all, but just suddenly blurted the thing out—-”
Anna gave him back his look of conciliation. “Well, the how and why don’t much matter now. The point is how to deal with your grandmother. You’ve not told me what she means to do.”
“Oh, she means to send for Adelaide Painter.”
The name drew a faint note of mirth from him and relaxed both their faces to a smile.
“Perhaps,” Anna added, “it’s really the best thing for us all.”
Owen shrugged his shoulders. “It’s too preposterous and humiliating. Dragging that woman into our secrets—-!”
“This could hardly be a secret much longer.”
He had moved to the hearth, where he stood pushing about the small ornaments on the mantel-shelf; but at her answer he turned back to her.
“You haven’t, of course, spoken of it to any one?”
“No; but I intend to now.”
She paused for his reply, and as it did not come she continued: “If Adelaide Painter’s to be told there’s no possible reason why I shouldn’t tell Mr. Darrow.” Owen abruptly set down the little statuette between his fingers. “None whatever: I want every one to know.”
She smiled a little at his over-emphasis, and was about to meet it with a word of banter when he continued, facing her: “You haven’t, as yet, said a word to him?”
“I’ve told him nothing, except what the discussion of our own plans–his and mine–obliged me to: that you were thinking of marrying, and that I wasn’t willing to leave France till I’d done what I could to see you through.”
At her first words the colour had rushed to his forehead; but as she continued she saw his face compose itself and his blood subside.
“You’re a brick, my dear!” he exclaimed.
“You had my word, you know.”
“Yes; yes-I know.” His face had clouded again. “And that’s all–positively all–you’ve ever said to him?”
“Positively all. But why do you ask?”
He had a moment’s embarrassed hesitation. “It was understood, wasn’t it, that my grandmother was to be the first to know?”
“Well–and so she has been, hasn’t she, since you’ve told her?”
He turned back to his restless shifting of the knick-knacks.
“And you’re sure that nothing you’ve said to Darrow could possibly have given him a hint—-?”
“Nothing I’ve said to him–certainly.”
He swung about on her. “Why do you put it in that way?”
“In what way?”
“Why–as if you thought some one else might have spoken…”
“Some one else? Who else?” She rose to her feet. “What on earth, my dear boy, can you be driving at?”
“I’m trying to find out whether you think he knows anything definite.”
“Why should I think so? Do you?”
“I don’t know. I want to find out.”
She laughed at his obstinate insistence. “To test my veracity, I suppose?” At the sound of a step in the gallery she added: “Here he is–you can ask him yourself.”