“Oh! I don’t mind answering them. I assure you I don’t. Why should I? It—it just seemed a little odd, you know. That’s all. A little odd.”
One advantage of being a medical practitioner is that you can usually tell when people are lying to you. I should have known from Mrs. Folliott’s manner, if from nothing else, that she did mind answering my questions—minded intensely. She was thoroughly uncomfortable and upset, and there was plainly some mystery in the background. I judged her to be a woman quite unused to deception of any kind, and consequently rendered acutely uneasy when forced to practise it. A child could have seen through her.
But it was also clear the she had no intention of telling me anything further. Whatever the mystery centering round Ursula Bourne might be, I was not going to learn it through Mrs. Folliott.
Defeated, I apologized once more for disturbing her, took my hat and departed.
I went to see a couple of patients and arrived home about six o’clock. Caroline was sitting beside the wreck of tea things. She had that look of suppressed exultation on her face which I know only too well. It is a sure sign with her, of either the getting or the giving of information. I wondered which it had been.
“I’ve had a very interesting afternoon,” began Caroline, as I dropped into my own particular easy chair and stretched out my feet to the inviting blaze in the fireplace.
“Have you?” I said. “Miss Gannett drop in to tea?”
Miss Gannett is one of the chief of our newsmongers.
“Guess again,” said Caroline, with intense complacency.