"Was it?"
In saying this, she brought her eyes back fully to her victim. And if ever guilt was written large upon a human countenance, it was upon the face of V. Vivian at that moment. Brightly flushed he was, with an embarrassment painful to witness. And yet, so strange is the way of life, the joy of victory once again seemed to slip from the clutch of Cally Heth. What house of cards was this she had pulled down upon herself?...
"Really, you must appreciate," the man was saying, in a light, dry voice, "I shouldn't feel at liberty to betray a secret of that sort, even if I knew. I'm sorry, but--"
But the girl's sickening sensations of falling through space broke out in faltering speech:
"Oh!... Do you mean ..." She halted, to steady herself, and took a fresh start, no better than the first: "Do you mean--that--"
"I mean only, Miss Heth, that I haven't the slightest idea what this is all about. I thought," he said, in a voice of increasing hardness, "that we were talking of the Works. If, at another time, you can give me a few minutes--"
"Was it YOU?" said Carlisle, breaking through his defenses ... "Do you mean--it was YOU, all along?..."
"I mean nothing of any sort. Does it occur to you that these questions are quite unfair?--that they put me in a ..."
She demanded in a small voice: "Did you buy this house for the Settlement?"
Shot down with the pointblank question, the tall young man, whose coat was so extremely polished at the elbows, died game, saying with sudden gentleness: