Chiefly for strategic reasons, she had sat down on the bench again, well back in the shadows. She did not speak; had no intention of speaking till speech might gain something. And the stranger, silent also, wore an air of hesitancy or confusion which was puzzling to her and yet quite reassuring, too. If he had come to say that Dalhousie would talk unless she did, would he be this sort of looking person at all?...
The man began abruptly; clearly nothing plotted out in advance.
"He's quite crushed.... I--I've just come from him...."
And then, hurriedly running his fingers through his hair, he retraced his steps for a better start.
"I should first say how kind it is of you to receive a--a stranger, in this way. I need hardly say that I appreciate it, greatly.... And I bring his hope that you can be merciful, and forgive him for what he did. He is badly broken, that I promise you.... It's all so curiously confused. But it doesn't seem that he can be quite so bad as they're saying here to-night...."
The stranger hesitated; he was gazing down with grave intentness.
"Miss Heth, Dal swears he can't remember the boat's upsetting at all."
His tone expressed, oddly, not so much a contradiction of anybody as a somewhat ingenuous hope for corroboration: Carlisle's ear caught that note at once. She was observing Jack Dalhousie's shabby friend as a determined adversary observes. He had moved a little nearer, or else the pale light better accustomed itself to him. And she saw that his face, though manifestly young, had an old-fashioned sort of look which seemed to go with his worn clothes; a quaint face, as she regarded it, odd-looking in some elusive way about the eyes, but, she felt surer and surer, not dangerous at all.
Now her gaze, shifting, had fastened upon his tie, which was undeniably quaint; a very large four-in-hand showing pictorially, as it seemed, a black sea holding for life a school of fat white fish. And then there came a lovely voice from the shadows--lovely, but did it sound just a little hard?...
"Perhaps you had better begin at the beginning, and tell me who you are, and what it is you want."