"What?"
"Oh!" she said, raising her hands to her hair with a bewildered movement--a movement that perhaps expressed regret as to the destination for which he was about to depart. "I do not know. Yet--still--I fear. Sebastian Ritherdon is cruel;--fierce--if--if--he thought you were about to cross his path--if--he knows anything that you do not know, then I dread what the end may be. And, I shall think always of that half-caste girl--peering in--glaring into your room, with perhaps, if she is a creature, a tool of his, murder in her heart."
"Fear nothing, I beseech you," he said deeply moved at her sympathy. "I can be very firm--very resolute--when occasion needs. Fear nothing."
[CHAPTER XIII.]
A CHANGE OF APARTMENTS
A boisterous welcome from Sebastian, a cordial grasp of the hand, accompanied by a smile from the dark eyes of Madame Carmaux (which latter would have appeared more sincere to Julian had the corners of the mouth been less drawn down and the eyelids closed a little less, while the eyes behind those lids glittering with a light that seemed to him unnatural), did not, to use a metaphor, throw any dust in his own eyes.
For long reflection on everything that had occurred since first George Ritherdon had made his statement in the Surrey home until now, when Julian stood once more in the house in which he believed himself to have been born, had only served to produce in his mind one conviction--the firm conviction that George Ritherdon was his uncle and had spoken the truth; that Sebastian was--in spite of all evidence seeming to point in a totally different direction--occupying a position which was not rightly his. A belief that, before long, he was resolved at all hazards to himself to justify and disprove once and for all.
The hilarious welcome on the part of Sebastian did not deceive him, therefore; the greeting of Madame Carmaux was, he felt, insincere. And feeling thus he knew that in the latter was one against whom he would have to be doubly on his guard.
And on his guard, against both the man and the woman, he commenced to be from the moment when he once more entered the precincts of Desolada.
That night at dinner, which was here called supper, but which only varied from the former meal in name, he observed a most palpable desire on the part of both his hosts to extract from him all that he had done while staying with the Sprangers--as well as an even stronger desire to discover into what society he might have been introduced, or what acquaintances he might happen to have made.