"You know!" she cried in her elation. "You know! Oh, and I sent you away yesterday! What if you had gone! Only to think of it! You know! That tune has given you the clue? It was Ralph's favourite! You heard it--when? Where? Tell me!"
To her eager, joyous questions Charnock was silent. He did not move. He still sat huddled in his chair, with his chin fallen on his breast, and his eyes fixedly staring at her. Miranda's enthusiasm was chilled by his silence; it was succeeded by fear. She became frightened; she picked up the note and held it out to him and bade it speak for her.
Charnock did not take the note or change his position. But he said:--
"Even on your honeymoon, you see, he left you to stand alone, while he gambled at the tables."
"But you mustn't think of that," she cried. "It's so small a thing."
"But so typical," added Charnock, quietly.
Miranda gave a moan and held her head between her hands. That Charnock might refuse to help her, because with tears in her eyes she had played the sedulous coquette, she had been prepared to acknowledge. But that he would refuse to help, out of a mistaken belief that, by refusing to help, he was helping best--that supposition had not so much as occurred to her.
"Read the note again," she implored him. "Do quickly what you can! And see, it is a week and more since M. Fournier was here. It is a fortnight and more since Ralph was kidnapped in the Sôk. Quickly! And nothing is done, and nothing will be done, unless you do it. Oh, think of him--driven, his hands tied, beaten with sticks, sold for a slave to trudge with loads upon his back, barefooted, through Morocco! You will go," and her voice broke and was very tender as she appealed to him. "Please! You will have pity on me, and on him." And she watched Charnock's face for a sign of assent, her heart throbbing, her foot beating the ground, and every now and then a queer tremulous moan breaking from her dry lips.
Charnock, however, did not soften at the imagined picture of Ralph's misfortunes, and he hardened his heart against the visible picture of her distress.
"When I was at Algeciras, I asked many questions about Ralph Warriner. I listened to many answers," he said curtly.