"Did you discover anything about him?" the grey lady asked anxiously.
"Dear Mary, there was nothing fresh to discover. Your love for Carl made you blind to his faults. Did we not all know what he was! Every man in India who knew him could have told you. It is a painful thing to say, but he was an utter blackguard. But for influence, he had been expelled the Civil Service long before he chose to vanish. It used to madden me to see the way in which he traded upon your affection for him. Oh, he was a bad man."
The red blood flamed into the cheeks of the listener. Berrington could see her hands clasped together.
"You are wrong," she said, "oh, I am sure you are wrong. Carl was a little selfish, perhaps, but then he was so brilliantly clever, so much sought after. And when he fell in love with—with the right woman, I was entirely happy. He was passionately in love, Philip."
Berrington gave a dissenting gesture. There was a bitter smile on his lips.
"Carl never cared for anyone but himself," he said. "It was a physical impossibility."
"Indeed you do him wrong, Phil. He was very much in earnest with Sir Charles Darryll's ward who came out with her brother and his wife to Simla. All was going brilliantly when a rival came on the scene. You were not in Simla at the time, and I daresay if you had been you would never have heard anything about that unhappy business. Whether the rival used his power unscrupulously or not I never knew, but there was a quarrel one day, out riding. Even Carl refused to speak of it. But his rival was never seen again, and
from that day to this Carl has been a physical wreck. He——"
"You don't mean to say," Berrington burst out, "you don't mean to say your brother is the Carl Sartoris who is master of this house?"
The woman hesitated, stammered, her face had grown very pale.