Agatha Christie: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

CHAPTER 9. DR. BAUERSTEIN (continued)

"What do you mean?" he said, in an unsteady voice.

"You see!" said Mary quietly. "You do see, don't you, that you have no right to dictate to me as to the choice of my friends?"

John glanced at her pleadingly, a stricken look on his face.

"No right? Have I no right, Mary?" he said unsteadily. He stretched out his hands. "Mary----"

For a moment, I thought she wavered. A softer expression came over her face, then suddenly she turned almost fiercely away.

"None!"

She was walking away when John sprang after her, and caught her by the arm.

"Mary"--his voice was very quiet now--"are you in love with this fellow Bauerstein?"

She hesitated, and suddenly there swept across her face a strange expression, old as the hills, yet with something eternally young about it. So might some Egyptian sphinx have smiled.

She freed herself quietly from his arm, and spoke over her shoulder.

"Perhaps," she said; and then swiftly passed out of the little glade, leaving John standing there as though he had been turned to stone.

Rather ostentatiously, I stepped forward, crackling some dead branches with my feet as I did so. John turned. Luckily, he took it for granted that I had only just come upon the scene.

"Hullo, Hastings. Have you seen the little fellow safely back to his cottage? Quaint little chap! Is he any good, though, really?"

"He was considered one of the finest detectives of his day."

"Oh, well, I suppose there must be something in it, then. What a rotten world it is, though!"