When they had shaken hands, Dick sat down. There was a silence—a very awkward silence. Roland passed the whisky along the table, and the other mechanically helped himself.
'I think,' Roland said presently, 'that you owe me an explanation of all this.'
'Of course I do,' assented Richard eagerly; 'but you are so—well, unapproachable; but I'll tell you every word about it,' which he did, omitting no particulars which bore on the case.
'So he called her Mrs Litvinoff, did he?' was Roland's comment on the Petrovitch-Ferrier episode at London Bridge. 'I should think she had just taken the name by chance, but for one thing.'
'And that is?'
'You say she lived in that house I saw Litvinoff go into the day we split. It must have been Litvinoff, and he must have been going to her; but it's very strange how he ever knew her. And was this really all the ground you had for doing what you did?' There was contempt in his tone.
'No,' said Richard. 'You went away on a "mysterious holiday" just when she disappeared, and that set all the village tongues wagging, and first made me wonder and suspect. Now I know I was wrong; but if you don't mind, Roland, I wish you'd tell me why you went just then. I've told you everything.'
'The whole thing is over and done with now,' he answered; 'and after to-night I don't want to ever speak about it; but I will tell you if you like. I went away because I saw you were beginning to care for Clare Stanley, and I was beginning to care too, and I thought that if I went away I could pull through it, and that you would make the running and be happy with her, but I found I couldn't do it, and I came back and did my best to cut you out, as you did by me.'
'Oh, Roland, what a good fellow you were to think of such a thing!' said Dick, to whom a generous action like this, even though only attempted, could not fail to appeal most strongly. 'But how is it now?' he went on, stung by a host of conflicting feelings. 'Have you made the running? Have you won her?'
'No!' he answered bitterly. 'The closing of the mill settled that for me as well as for you. Some one else has had as good a chance as ours, though, and has made a better use of it. Count Litvinoff is a constant visitor at the house where she is, and I don't doubt she will marry him; unless, indeed, he is married already. I think we ought to try and find that out.'