"What, Mrs. Westbrook? I will tell you if I can."
"Well—" she still hesitated, "if I only knew what your knowledge amounts to. You say General Westbrook was innocent of any wrong-doing; how should you know? What reason have you had to consider the possibility at all, if some suspicion has not been engendered in your mind? Then, what occasioned that suspicion? You see, I am torn by doubts and anxieties."
"Yes, Mrs. Westbrook, so I perceive. But it would require half the night to go fully into this matter; and still, to free you from your doubts and anxieties, I may tell you this: that the tragedies of which Señor de Sanchez and your husband were the victims are very closely connected, and I have many reasons for believing that whatever light may be thrown upon one will correspondingly tend to clear the other. The name Castillo—or Del Castillo—bears a close relation to both; therefore it is essential that every circumstance bearing upon that relation should be known and understood. It is evident that you know something of Don Juan of which I am ignorant; it is also evident that whatever you know troubles you. Now, I may be able to remove the cause of that trouble, and you to give me some valuable information."
She pondered quite a while.
"Mr. Converse, I am a proud woman," she announced, simply; "to go into such intimate family matters—thus openly to discuss topics which I hesitate to contemplate even in the privacy of my own thoughts—is to me a very real torture; but for the sake of my dead husband, I owe you some sort of explanation. When you mentioned that name it frightened me; it made me suspect that you had the power of divining what is forbidden my own mind, and I naturally wondered to what extent that divination was capable of penetrating.
"But, after all, my fears have been based on a mere phantom—a name spoken in the dark—and in hearkening to it and pondering upon it, I have allowed myself greatly to wrong my husband. God forgive me! ... Has not the entire matter become irrelevant?" she abruptly finished, with obvious reluctance to proceed.
"Far from it—far from it," was the reply, uttered emphatically; "you must let me be the judge of that. There are so many ramifications to these two tragedies, that you cannot even remotely realize how significant and important the most trifling particular may be."
"But it does not affect Joyce—in any way you imagine.... Please be seated, Mr. Converse."
He obeyed this second injunction, drawing the chair around so that he directly faced her. He waited quietly for her to proceed.
"Do you still wish to hear?" she asked presently; and when he bowed a courteous intimation that he was waiting, she continued: