“Then tell me plainly, Mr Pacey.”
“Cornel!”
“I will speak, Michael,” she said gently. “His happiness and mine depend upon my knowing the truth.—Mr Pacey, I am waiting.”
Pacey gazed at her with his face full of reverence for the woman before whom he stood, but no words left his lips.
“You are silent,” she said calmly. “You fear to tell me the worst. He is not ill: you said so. He cannot be in want of money. Then it is as I gathered from your letter: he has been led into some terrible temptation.”
Pacey bowed his head gravely.
“Now, are you satisfied?” said Thorpe earnestly. “I knew that it was so.”
“And I clung so fondly to the hope that it was not,” said Cornel, gazing straight before her, and as if she were thinking aloud. Then, turning to Pacey—“He was becoming famous, was he not?”
“Yes.”
“Succeeding wonderfully with his art?”