Whether that be the case or no, Bellwattle guesses. I am quite sure of that. A thousand times I have been so eager to know the nature of her guessing that I have well-nigh told her all. It has been on the end of my tongue when a sudden timidity has caught it back. And now that I have met Clarissa, the timidity is no less. It is more.
Three nights in succession, Bellwattle and I have been out in a fruitless search upon the cliffs. Not a soul have we seen. I have even begun to wonder whether the Miss Fennells were made suspicious by the questions I had asked, for on each occasion a light was shining in Clarissa's room and not a sign of movement came from within the house.
"I thought," said Bellwattle, on the third evening, "I thought the Miss Fennells said they took their invalid out for a walk when it was dark."
I did not look at her. I knew she was looking at me.
"So they said," I replied.
"I'm rather curious to see that invalid," she went on; "they say in the village here that she's not an invalid at all."
"What then?" I asked.
"Oh—all sorts of stories. Tierney told me the other day—Tierney is our town-councillor and plumber. As a human being he lets the drains get into disorder—as a town-councillor he gives himself the contract to see to them, and as a plumber he partly puts them right. You ought to meet him. But he told me that she was a black from the West Indies."
"How did he know that?" I asked, quickly, and the next moment I saw how my words must imply knowledge to her.
"He doesn't know it," said she. "Why should he? Isn't it when people don't know things that they talk about them?"