“Surely,” he said, “you have told me too much, or not enough. You have confessed that you received a great shock while sitting with me in my uncle’s presence; how can it, then, be indiscreet to admit what discovery it was that affected you so much?”
“I may have been mistaken,” said Monsieur Blaise, beginning to recover his normal colour, and turning his small eyes cunningly towards his companion, as if to find out how much he had betrayed. “I was excited, nervous. We had talked ourselves, you and I, into a sort of feverish, suspicious state, in which trifles seemed to become mountains. What I saw was nothing; well, what I fancied may have been nothing too.”
Bayre tried to recall every smallest fact connected with their short visit. His uncle had sat between the fireplace and a high window; behind him and his table Bayre remembered that there had hung a curtain, or piece of tapestry, which fell in deep folds. The corner was a dark one; his own attention had been riveted upon his uncle and Monsieur Blaise. It was quite possible that some person might have peeped out from behind the hangings during that short interview, and that Monsieur Blaise might have seen and recognised the face of the intruder.
“Did you see, or fancy you saw, anyone in the room besides our three selves?” he asked abruptly.
By the sudden access of agitation in his companion Bayre saw that his guess was a good one.
“What do you mean? I saw nothing, nobody, no, of course not,” he stammered out incoherently. “It is like that, monsieur, I do not see nothing nor nobody. And I will not be interrogated as if by a judge of instruction. If you have the desire of making inquiries you will do so without my assistance. I have seen nothing and I will say nothing.”
And he made as if to button up his own mouth by pressing the large, loose lips together until they looked like a long white seam.
They had reached the open road, and were about to turn to the right, in the direction of the landing-place, when they heard certain sounds behind them which made them look guiltily, anxiously, at each other.
A girl’s voice that spoke in a sort of sigh, a girl’s light footsteps on the hard road. That was all. It was with a guilty look that they met Miss Eden when she called to them to stop. She had followed them from the château, her hat held on with one hand and no sort of wrap round her shoulders. She was out of breath, and her eyes were full of distress and anxiety.
Monsieur Blaise raised his hat in silence and would have pushed on without further greeting. But she stood in front of them, with determination in her set face.