“I am sorry I intruded upon you; I thought you would like to hear what I knew about your wife; I will go.”
George was immediately shocked at his own savagery, and without approaching or looking at her said he had not meant to be rude, his temper was not improved by confinement, and he should be very glad if she would tell him something—anything, only she must tell him nothing but the truth.
“Yes, yes, I will tell you the truth indeed,” she said humbly, clasping her hands with restless impulsiveness, and recognising, with the shrewdness of long practice in the arts of pleasing men, that to relate bare facts was her best chance with this one. “She came to me five days ago—in the early morning—to my house in London. It was the day after she left you. The person who brought her——”
“Rahas?” interrupted George sharply.
“Yes, Rahas—had told her (I assure you he was not acting by my authority)——”
“Go on, go on.”
“Rahas had told her that you had come to me—that I was in Paris, that I was ready to help you (indeed, I should have been, I assure you).”
George moved again brusquely, and Chloris hastened back to the facts.
“He took her to an hotel, but Nouna mistrusted him, and insisted on remaining in the fiacre while he went in to see if I was there. When he had gone in she jumped out of the cab, made inquiries of the proprietress, and found I had never been to the hotel at all. (You understand, Mr. Lauriston, that all this was without my sanction?)”
“Perfectly,” said George, with the best accent of sincerity he could muster.