She turned right round, with a peculiar movement of the throat as if swallowing something, and made sure that the whist-players were interested in their game. In that position she heard the next words.
"He did not even take the trouble to write home to his friends. I thought it rather strange at the time, and told him so. Later on I heard the truth of it. I heard him tell some one else that he was engaged to a girl in England, and he thought it a very good way of getting out of the engagement."
"You heard him tell that, with your own ears?"
"Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke."
Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.
Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, "Did he say that he--did not love her?"
"Yes, the cad!"
"He cannot have been a nice man,"
