"I--haven't anything to do with it, I've said! It's all purely a business matter--purely!" And because, being a woman, she had been interested in the personal side of all this from the beginning, she could not forbear adding, with indignation: "I can't imagine why you ever thought of coming to me, in the first place."
"Why I ever thought of it?" he repeated, looking down at her as much as to ask whom on earth should he come to then.
"If you had a complaint to make, why didn't you go direct to my father?"
"Ah, but I don't know your father, you see."
"Oh!... And you consider that you do know me?"
The man's right hand, which rested upon the pilaster, seemed to shake a little.
"Well," he said, hesitatingly, "we've been through some trouble together...."
Then was heard the loud scraping of shovels, and the merry cackle of the old negro, happy because others toiled in the glad morning, while he did not. Cally Heth's white glove rested on Mr. Beirne's polished balustrade, and her piquant lashes fell.
She desired to go away now, but she could not go, on any such remark as that. Staying, she desired to contradict what the alien had said, but she could not do that either. The complete truth of his remark had come upon her, indeed, with a sudden shock. This man did know her. They had been through trouble together. Only, it seemed, you never really got through trouble in this world: it always bobbed up again, waiting for you, whichever way you turned....
And what did this lame stranger have to do with her, that, of all people on earth, his eyes alone had twice seen into her heart?...