But Page, though very pale, was perfectly calm under her sister’s outburst.

“If you didn’t care whether anyone knew that Mr. Corthell came up here,” she said, quietly, “why did you tell us this morning at breakfast that you and he were in the art gallery the whole evening? I thought,” she added, with elaborate blandness, “I thought I would be doing you a service in hiding the match box.”

“A service! You! What have I to hide?” cried Laura, almost inarticulate. “Of course I said we were in the art gallery the whole evening. So we were. We did⁠—I do remember now⁠—we did come up here for an instant, to see how my picture hung. We went downstairs again at once. We did not so much as sit down. He was not in the room two minutes.”

“He was here,” returned Page, “long enough to smoke half a dozen times.” She pointed to a silver pen tray on the mahogany table, hidden behind a book rack and littered with the ashes and charred stumps of some five or six cigarettes.