'According to the newspaper,' I said after we had gone some distance, 'Springfield left a sealed packet containing letters. Was one of them for you?'
'Yes.'
'You do not feel disposed to tell me what it contained?'
'I would if I could, but I—can't.'
'Then I'm going to see George St. Mabyn, and get it out of him.'
'George does not know.'
Again there was a painful silence between us, and again I tried to understand what was in her mind.
'Lorna,' I said, 'I want to tell you something. It has been in my mind a long time, but if there's one thing you and I both despise it's speaking ill of another. But I can't help myself. You must know the truth.'
Thereupon I told her the whole of Springfield's story as I knew it. I related to her the conversation I had heard between Springfield and George St. Mabyn. I described the attempts made to kill Jack Carbis. I told her what Colonel McClure had said, both in our conversations and in the letter he wrote me after Springfield's death.
'Why have you told me all this?' she asked, and her voice was hard, almost bitter.