“Not even to Miralda, I mean? I told her I wanted to talk to you, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
“When was that?”
“A couple of days ago.” That was before our talk on the Stella when she had been intent upon keeping me at a distance.
“Why did you ask her?”
“There you go again. You said you wouldn’t question me. I wish you wouldn’t,” he said peevishly, and then added with utter inconsequence; “she used to be always speaking of you when she came back from Paris. You were Miralda’s Englishman, you know. And when you turned up here——”
“I’d rather you didn’t tell me.”
“You are an odd mixture. One minute you want to know everything and the next you shut me up. She’s awfully white and it’s because it’s so hard on her that I feel such a brute. I——” he pulled up suddenly and seized his hat. “No, hang it, I can’t tell you now.”
At that moment Bryant brought in a letter from Volheno asking me to go to him at once, and when we were alone again Vasco held out his hand. “May I come again? I—I should like to tell you.”
I told him to come any time, and having made me repeat my promise not to give him away, he wrung my hand and went off.
So Miralda was being sacrificed to save her brother from the consequences of the “shame and crime” of which he had been guilty. That was unmistakably plain now; as plain as that Sampayo was the brute who was demanding the sacrifice as the price of his silence.