"I have some ideas," he confessed modestly. "I spend my idle moments, even here, weaving a little fiction."
"And recounting it, I dare say," Jocelyn ventured.
"I am like all artists," Crawshay sighed. "I love an audience. I must express myself to something. I will wish you good evening, Miss Beverley. I feel inclined to take a little walk, in case it becomes too rough later on."
He shuffled away, once more the perfect prototype of the malade imaginaire. Jocelyn Thew watched him in silence until he had disappeared. Then he turned and seated himself by the girl's side.
"I find myself," he remarked ruminatively, "still a little troubled as to the precise amount of intelligence which our friend Mr. Crawshay might be said to possess. I wonder if I might ask; without your considering it a liberty, what he was talking to you about?"
"About you," she answered.
"Ah!"
"Warning me against you."
"Dear me! Aren't you terrified?"
"I am not terrified," she replied, "but I think it best to tell you that he also has suspicions, absurd though it may seem, of Phillips and the doctor."