"No."
"Your voice lacks both strength and stability?"
"Yes."
"And you have found the one way by which you could get on—and you don't like it?"
"Crossley told you?" said she, the color flaring.
"Your name was not mentioned. You may not believe it, but Crossley is a gentleman."
She walked on in silence.
"I did not expect your failure to come so soon—or in quite that way," he went on. "I got Mrs. Brindley to exact a promise from you that you'd let her know about yourself. I called on Mrs. Belloc one day when you were out, and gave her my confidence and got hers—and assured myself that you were in good hands. Crossley's tale gave me—a shock. I came at once."
"Then you didn't abandon me to my fate, as I thought?"
He smiled in his strange way. "I?—when I loved you? Hardly."