"Thank you," Bushwick returned, unruffled. "It's about what Miss Macroyd
told me. That's the reason I don't want the ghost-dance to fail."

Verrian did not notice him. He found it more important to say: "She's
so loyal to Mrs. Westangle that she wouldn't have wished, in Mrs.
Westangle's interest, to have her presence, or her agency in what is
going on, known; but, of course, if Mrs. Westangle chooses to, tell it,
that's her affair."

"She would have had to tell it, sooner or later, Mrs. Westangle would;
and she only told it to Miss Macroyd this afternoon on compulsion, after
Miss Macroyd and I had seen you in the wood-road, and Mrs. Westangle had
to account for the young lady's presence there in your company. Then
Miss Macroyd had to tell me; but I assure you, my dear fellow, the matter
hasn't gone any further."

"Oh, it's quite indifferent to me," Verrian retorted. "I'm nothing but
a dispassionate witness of the situation."

"Of course," Bushwick assented, and then he added, with a bonhomie really
so amiable that a man with even an unreasonable grudge could hardly
resist it, "If you call it dispassionate."

Verrian could not help laughing. "Well, passionate, then. I don't know
why it should be so confoundedly vexatious. But somehow I would have
chosen Miss Macroyd--Is she specially dear to you?"

"Not the least!"

"I would have chosen her as the last person to have the business, which