"Is it
likely I'd tell her? Is it likely I'd give my own girl the clue? She
said it all of herself, I tell you, without one word of prompting.
She said it just as I repeated it--to a place in the wilds by the
name of Mambury."
Gilbert Gildersleeve whistled inaudibly to himself. 'Twas his way
when he felt himself utterly nonplussed. This was very strange
news. He didn't really understand it. But he rose and confronted
his wife anxiously. That overbearing big man was evidently stirred
by this untoward event to the very depths of his nature.
"Then Gwennie knows all!" he cried, the blood rushing purple into
his ruddy flushed cheeks. "The wretch! The brute! He must have told
her everything!"
"Oh, Gilbert," his wife answered, sinking into a chair in her
horror, "even HE couldn't do that--not to my own very daughter!
And he didn't do it, I'm sure. He didn't dare--coward as he is,
he couldn't be quite so cowardly. She doesn't guess what it means.
She thinks it's something, I believe, about Granville Kelmscott.
She's in love with young Kelmscott, as I told you long ago, and
everything to her mind takes some colour from that fancy. I don't
think it ever occurred to her, from what she says, this has anything
at all to do with you or me, Gilbert.
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