“You are speaking of the keeper’s wife,” said Redlaw.
“Yes.” The student bent his head, as if he rendered her some silent homage.
The Chemist, in whom there was a cold, monotonous apathy, which rendered him more like a marble image on the tomb of the man who had started from his dinner yesterday at the first mention of this student’s case, than the breathing man himself, glanced again at the student leaning with his hand upon the couch, and looked upon the ground, and in the air, as if for light for his blinded mind.
“I remembered your name,” he said, “when it was mentioned to me down stairs, just now; and I recollect your face. We have held but very little personal communication together?”
“Very little.”
“You have retired and withdrawn from me, more than any of the rest, I think?”
The student signified assent.
“And why?” said the Chemist; not with the least expression of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. “Why? How comes it that you have sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of your remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, and of your being ill? I want to know why this is?”
The young man, who had heard him with increasing agitation, raised his downcast eyes to his face, and clasping his hands together, cried with sudden earnestness and with trembling lips:
“Mr. Redlaw! You have discovered me. You know my secret!”