“Your sister!” he repeated. “There is a likeness, of course. You are dark and she is fair, but there is a likeness. That would account,” he continued, “for her anxiety to find you.”
“It also accounts,” Beatrice replied, with a little break of the lips, “for my anxiety that she should not find me. Leonard,” she added, touching his hand for a moment with hers, “I wish that I could tell you everything, but there are things behind, things so terrible, that even to you, my dear brother, I could not speak of them.”
Tavernake rose to his feet and lit a cigarette—a new habit with him, while Beatrice busied herself with a small coffee-making machine. He sat in an easy-chair and smoked slowly. He was still wearing his ready-made clothes, but his collar was of the fashionable shape, his tie well chosen and neatly adjusted. He seemed somehow to have developed.
“Beatrice,” he asked, “what am I to tell your sister to-morrow?”
She shivered as she set his coffee-cup down by his side.
“Tell her, if you will, that I am well and not in want,” she answered. “Tell her, too, that I refuse to send my address. Tell her that the one aim of my life is to keep the knowledge of my whereabouts a secret from her.”
Tavernake relapsed into silence. He was thinking. Mysteries had no attraction for him—he loathed them. Against this one especially he felt a distinct grudge. Nevertheless, some instinct forbade his questioning the girl.
“Apart from more personal matters, then,” he asked after some time, “you would not advise me to enter into any business negotiations with this lady?”
“You must not think of it,” Beatrice replied, firmly. “So far as money is concerned, Elizabeth has no conscience whatever. The things she wants in life she will have somehow, but it is all the time at other people's expense. Some day she will have to pay for it.”
Tavernake sighed.