‘First of all, let me ask how you are to-day? How did you sustain the shock of the cold water yesterday afternoon?’
‘I have taken no cold, thank you. In fact, when I had got my wet things off, and had become warm by the fire, I was so utterly worn out that I couldn’t sit up any longer, and ignominiously went to bed.’
‘And to sleep, I hope?’
‘Well—I won’t boast of having slept much; but that was not because of the plunge into the Balder Beck.... Mr. Langstroth, I am not going to make apologies or say I am sure you must be surprised at my asking you to call upon me to-day, or anything of that kind. I think you can believe I am trying to act for the best.’
‘I am sure you are,’ said he, briefly and coldly.
‘Yes. Therefore, no apologies are needed; but perhaps a word of explanation is. You know I am almost a stranger here?’
‘Yes.’
‘But of course you do not know that my brother is as much a stranger to me and my friends as I am to him and his.’
‘I did not know it—but——’
‘You did not know it. But it is so. What you told me last night, in answer to my question,’—she hastened to add, as he looked up quickly—‘you could not help it, it was not your fault, but it distressed me dreadfully. I thought about it all night. I felt that I was groping in the dark, with no one and nothing to guide me. There is no one here from whom I can ask a question—not one. I want to know if you will answer me one or two.’