"Can you not guess them?" he said, looking at her intently. "Can you think of no powerful motive that would make me anxious to delay the telling of the story?"
"None," she said. "None, except one that would be beneath you."
"Beneath me? Is it possible?" scoffed Percival. "No motive is too base for me, allow me to tell you, my dear child. I am the true designing villain of romance. Go on: what is the one bad motive which you attribute to me?"
"I do not attribute it to you," said Elizabeth, slowly, but with some indignation. "I never in my life believed, I never shall believe, that you cared in the least whether I was rich or poor."
Percival paused, as if he had met with an unexpected check, and then went off into a fit of rather forced laughter.
"So you never thought that," he said. "And that was the only motive that occurred to you? Then, perhaps you will kindly tell me the story as it was told to you, for you seem to have had a special edition. Has Dino Vasari been down here?"
She gave him a short account of the events that had occurred at Netherglen, and she noticed that as he listened, he forgot to smoke his cigar, and that he leaned his elbow on the arm of the great chair, and shaded his eyes with his hand. There was a certain suppressed eagerness in his manner, as he turned round when she had finished, and said, with lifted eyebrows:—
"Is that all?"
"What else do you know?" said Elizabeth.
He rubbed his hand impatiently backwards and forwards on the arm of the chair, and did not speak for a moment.