"You shivered."
"Did I? It makes me nervous to hear you talk about 'dirty rags of memory.' I didn't suppose any one lived who hadn't regrets. I know I have."
"No doubt. I can imagine what for. I'm talking of real offenses. The sort of thing Madam Crewe hints at in connection with my grandfather. By Jove, I wonder what the poor old duffer was guilty of. Perhaps, to put it euphemistically, he appropriated funds not his own—swiped from your great-grandfather's till. Seriously, that's no joke! I can imagine that even if a chap didn't care much about his family-tree, it might be a rather scorching reflection to know you'd descended—fallen—from a rotten apple of a thief, or something. You'd be forever looking for some taint of it to crop out in you. I confess, it wouldn't rejoice even my democratic soul. But that's what I'm going out for to discover. So, when next you see me, perhaps you won't."
Katherine's hand went toward him in an impulse too strong to resist.
"You know better than that," she said in a voice not wholly steady.
Dr. Ballard's large, firm grasp closed about her slender trembling fingers.
"I know better than that," he repeated gravely. "But there's something else, not your friendship, I can't be so confident of. When I come back, if everything's all right, as I believe it will be, I hope you'll be kind to me, and set my heart at rest about that too."
Katherine could not answer. After a moment of silent waiting, the doctor gently released her hand.
"I met Mrs. Slawson as I came along," he said in his usual manner. "She's a trump, that woman. The most normal human creature I've ever met."
"Her English isn't normal," Katherine said, trying to control the helpless trembling that was shaking her from head to foot.