“Your sister doesn’t know,” I said, lifting my hand to check him. “I think you ought to understand the whole case—if you’ll let me tell you what I know about it.”
“Go ahead,” he bade me. “I’ll try to listen patiently, though the very thought of the fellow has always set my teeth on edge.”
“He’s not at all what you think,” I said. “There’s an enormous difference, almost impossible to explain to you, but something you’d understand at once if you saw him. It’s such a difference, in fact, that when I found that he was Larrabee Harman the revelation was inexpressibly shocking and distressing to me. He came here under another name; I had no suspicion that he was any one I’d ever heard of, much less that I’d actually seen him twice, two years ago, and I’ve grown to—well, in truth, to be fond of him.”
“What is the change?” asked Ward, and his voice showed that he was greatly disquieted. “What is he like?”
“As well as I can tell you, he’s like an odd but very engaging boy, with something pathetic about him; quite splendidly handsome—”
“Oh, he had good looks to spare when I first knew him,” George said bitterly. “I dare say he’s got them back if he’s taken care of himself, or been taken care OF, rather! But go on; I won’t interrupt you again. Why did he come here? Hoping to see—”
“No. When he came here he did not know of her existence except in the vaguest way. But to go back to that, I’d better tell you first that the woman we saw with him, one day on the boulevard, and who was in the accident with him—”
“La Mursiana, the dancer; I know.”
“She had got him to go through a marriage with her—”
“WHAT?” Ward’s eyes flashed as he shouted the word.