She nodded. "Some—some—something you don't want to know. It—it was
Maud made me come."
That moved him a little. That piteous stammer of hers had always touched his compassion. "Don't fret yourself, ma chère!" he said. "I know all there is to know—all about Rozelle—all about Larpent—all about Spentoli."
"You—you don't know this," said Toby. "You—you—you don't know—why I ran away from you—in Paris!"
"Don't I?" he said, and she heard the irony of his voice. "I have an agile brain, my child. I can generally jump the gaps pretty successfully."
She shook her head with vehemence. "And how do you know about Spentoli?" she demanded suddenly. "Who told you that?"
"The man himself," said Saltash.
"Ah! And what did he tell you?" A note of fierceness sounded in her voice. She seemed to gather herself together like a cornered animal preparing to make a wild dash for freedom.
Saltash made her a queer, abrupt bow, and in so doing he blocked the way before her so that she could only flee by the way she had come. "He told me nothing that I did not know before," he said, "nothing that your own eyes had not told me long ago."
"What do you mean?" breathed Toby, pressing her clasped hands tightly to her breast. Her eyes were still upraised to his; they glittered in the dimness.
Saltash answered her more gently than was his wont. "I mean that I know the sort of inferno your life had been—a perpetual struggle against odds that were always overwhelming you. If it hadn't been so, you would never have come to me for shelter. Do you think I ever flattered myself that that was anything but a last resource—the final surrender to circumstance? If I had failed you—"