Cleve was getting on his coat, and speaking like a man in a dream.
"I say, Tom Sedley, how did you come by this note?" he said, with a sudden pause, and holding Miss Sheckleton's note in his fingers.
"Well, quite innocently," hesitated Sedley.
"How the devil was it, sir? Come, you may as well—by heaven, Sedley, you shall tell me the truth!"
Tom looked on his friend Cleve, and saw his eyes gleaming sharply on him, and his face very white.
"Of course I'll tell you, Cleve," said Tom, and with this exordium he stumbled honestly through his story, which by no means quieted Cleve Verney.
"You d——d little Paul Pry!" said he. "Well, you have got hold of a secret now, like the man in the iron mask, and by——you had better keep it."
A man who half blames himself already, and is in a position which he hates and condemns, will stand a great deal more of hard language, and even of execration, than he would under any other imaginable circumstances.
"You can't blame me half as much as I do myself. I assure you, Cleve, I'm awfully sorry. It was the merest lark—at first—and then—when I saw that beautiful—that young lady—"