'You are, then, very much interested in my friend?' said Petrovitch.
'Well,' said Richard, finding it desperately hard to break through his English reserve, and yet feeling that he could not in common fairness expect to get any information from one who called himself a 'friend' of Alice's without showing good reasons for asking for such information. 'Well, I am interested, very much interested, but not quite in the way that men generally are when they talk about being interested in a woman. Look here,' he said, stopping, and finding his powers of diplomacy absolutely failing him, falling back on the naked truth, 'that young woman has been the cause—the innocent cause, mind—of a complete separation between my brother and myself. I thought my brother had done her a great wrong. Can you tell me whether he did or not? His name is Roland Ferrier.'
'So far as I know Mrs Litvinoff's story,' said Petrovitch, speaking very deliberately, 'no wrong of any sort has ever been done her by any one of that name.'
'Ay, but,' said Richard, 'so far as you know; but do you know all? Do you know with whom she did go when she left her home?'
'I do.'
'It was not my brother?'
'It was not your brother.'
Richard had just said that he felt greatly relieved. If that statement was true, his looks certainly belied him.
'One question more,' he said. 'I want to know exactly how far wrong I have been. Do you know if my brother has had any communication at all with her since she left her home?—did he know where she was?'
'I believe that he has had no communication with her, and that he did not know where she was.'