She nodded calmly.
“What made you think he had?”
“Oh, I don’t exactly know. But I just thought he might have done, when Hicks said there was a gentleman here, and described him. You see, I wrote to him — in Africa — begging him to come back. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t know he was in town until that afternoon, and I… I was frightened. That’s really all.”
“No. What else?”
I saw that Lewis of course had noticed as well as I her barely perceptible hesitation.
“Nothing else,” she said.
They looked at each other steadily for some seconds.
“But you are definitely sure now that it was not he?”
“Definitely, Major Lewis.”
“Do you know Mr. Maitland-Rice?”
She looked surprised at that, then smiled whimsically. It was the first sign of the old Catherine I’d seen for some time.
