‘Everything,’ returned Lightwood impatiently, ‘seems, by a fatality, to bring us round to Lizzie. “About town” meant about Lizzie, just now, Eugene.’
‘My solicitor, do you know,’ observed Eugene, turning round to the furniture, ‘is a man of infinite discernment!’
‘Did it not, Eugene?’
‘Yes it did, Mortimer.’
‘And yet, Eugene, you know you do not really care for her.’
Eugene Wrayburn rose, and put his hands in his pockets, and stood with a foot on the fender, indolently rocking his body and looking at the fire. After a prolonged pause, he replied: ‘I don’t know that. I must ask you not to say that, as if we took it for granted.’
‘But if you do care for her, so much the more should you leave her to herself.’
Having again paused as before, Eugene said: ‘I don’t know that, either. But tell me. Did you ever see me take so much trouble about anything, as about this disappearance of hers? I ask, for information.’
‘My dear Eugene, I wish I ever had!’
‘Then you have not? Just so. You confirm my own impression. Does that look as if I cared for her? I ask, for information.’