ied. She didn't
look married, or have the air of being married, somehow, and in the
conversation that followed she contradicted herself two or three times.
Perhaps it was only because I confused my brain with wild guesses, but
from some things she said one would think she was free as air; from
others, that she was tied down to a rather monotonous kind of existence.
She spoke of America as if she knew it only from a short visit. Then, in
answer to a question of Murray's, she said, as if reluctantly, that she
had lived there, in New York, and Baltimore, and Washington, for years.

It was quite evident to me--whether or not it was to Murray--that Mrs.
Brandreth (as he called her after the first outburst of "Rosemary!")
disliked talking of herself and her way of life. She wanted to talk
about Major Murray, or, failing that subject, of almost anything that
was remote from her own affairs.

I gathered, however, that she and Murray had known each other eight
years ago or more, and that they had met somewhere abroad, out of
England. There had been an aunt of Rosemary's with whom she had
travelled as a young girl. The aunt was dead; but even the loss of a
loved relative didn't account to my mind for this girl's sensitiveness
about the past.

"They must have been engaged, these two, and something happened to break
it off," I thought. "But _he_ can bear to talk of old times, and she
can't. Odd, because she must have been ridiculously young for a love
affair all those years ago. She doesn't look more than twenty-one now,
though she must be more, of course--at least twenty-four. And he is
probably thirty-two or three."

I am often what Jim calls "intuitive," and I had a strong impression
that there was something the beautiful Mrs. Brandreth was desperately
anxious to conceal, desperately afraid of betraying by accident. Could
it have to do with her husband? I wondered. She seemed very loth to
speak of him, and I couldn't make out from what she said whether the man
was still in existence. Her mourning--so becoming to her magnolia skin,
great dark eyes, and ash-blonde hair--didn't look like widow's mourning.
Still, it might be, with the first heaviness of crepe thrown off. Or, of
course, the girl's peculiar reticence might mean that there had been, or
was to be, a divorce.

I didn't move from my deck-chair till luncheon time, but I had to go
then with Jim; and we left Mrs. Brandreth ordering her food from the
deck steward. She w