Her question was so like the spoken sound of his own dreadful suspicion that it took away his breath completely, while he stared at her with a gasp that was evenly divided between a laugh and a groan.
"Oh, she's a saint, there's no doubt of that," he insisted loyally.
"Then I'll let her rest," she replied, "and I'm glad, heaven knows, to have my doubts at an end. But where do you imagine that I am taking you?"
"For a drive, I hope," he answered, smiling.
"It's not," she rejoined grimly, "it's for a visit."
"A visit?" he repeated, starting up with the impulse to jump over the moving wheel, "but I never visit."
She reached out her wiry little fingers, which clung like a bird's claw, and drew him by force back upon the seat.
"I am taking you to see Adam Crowley," she explained, "do you remember him?"
"Crowley?" he repeated the name as he searched his memory. "Why, yes, he was my father's clerk for forty years, wasn't he? I asked when I came home what had become of him. So he is still living?"
"He was paralysed in one arm some years ago, and it seems he has lost all his savings in some investment your father had advised him to make. Of course, there was no legal question of a debt to him, but until the day your father died he had always made ample provision for the old man's support. Crowley had always believed that the allowance would be continued—that there would be a mention made of him in the will."