“Yes, I have looked—for you.”
“How for me, dear Miss Tita? Do you mean you would have given them to me if you had found them?” I asked, almost trembling.
She delayed to reply and I waited. Suddenly she broke out, “I don’t know what I would do—what I wouldn’t!”
“Would you look again—somewhere else?”
She had spoken with a strange unexpected emotion, and she went on in the same tone: “I can’t—I can’t—while she lies there. It isn’t decent.”
“No, it isn’t decent,” I replied gravely. “Let the poor lady rest in peace.” And the words, on my lips, were not hypocritical, for I felt reprimanded and shamed.
Miss Tita added in a moment, as if she had guessed this and were sorry for me, but at the same time wished to explain that I did drive her on or at least did insist too much: “I can’t deceive her that way. I can’t deceive her—perhaps on her deathbed.”
“Heaven forbid I should ask you, though I have been guilty myself!”
“You have been guilty?”
“I have sailed under false colors.” I felt now as if I must tell her that I had given her an invented name, on account of my fear that her aunt would have heard of me and would refuse to take me in. I explained this and also that I had really been a party to the letter written to them by John Cumnor months before.