“Like whom?”
“C-c-cardinal Montan-nelli. I wonder whether his irreproachable Eminence has any nephews, by the way? Who is it, if I may ask?”
“It is a portrait, taken in childhood, of the friend I told you about the other day——”
“Whom you killed?”
She winced in spite of herself. How lightly, how cruelly he used that dreadful word!
“Yes, whom I killed—if he is really dead.”
“If?”
She kept her eyes on his face.
“I have sometimes doubted,” she said. “The body was never found. He may have run away from home, like you, and gone to South America.”
“Let us hope not. That would be a bad memory to carry about with you. I have d-d-done some hard fighting in my t-time, and have sent m-more than one man to Hades, perhaps; but if I had it on my conscience that I had sent any l-living thing to South America, I should sleep badly——”