I held up my hand. 'If you talk any more I shall go; and I have more to say to you. I want you to get well, and there's someone else who is even more anxious than I am. But you have made one mistake, I think. You think that Voisin attacked you because you were about to meet Miss Jenrys, do you not?'
He stared, but did not answer.
'When the brunette met you in the afternoon of that day, she gave you some reason for believing that Miss J. desired to see you, and that if you joined them that night it would please her.'
I paused, but again he was mute.
'My friend,' I went on, 'I believe that Love, besides being himself blind, is capable of blinding and befooling the wits of the wisest. That brunette is an impostor. As for knowing Miss Jenrys, she does, if following her up and down, and trying to force an acquaintance, is knowing her. Here is the truth: That brunette, as we all call her, for want of any other appellation, is one of a trio, or perhaps a quartet, of adventurers, confidence men, counterfeiters, what you will, so that it is evil. They are here for mischief, and they began at once, through this brunette decoy, to entrap Miss Jenrys, for what purpose I am just beginning to learn. It seems, too, that they have designs upon you, for they decoyed you out the other night, this brunette and one of their woman companions dressed to resemble Miss J., and when they had you upon the bridge and you thought you were about to meet Miss J., two men who had been lying in wait for you behind a buttress sprang upon you, and while one thrust you over, the other dealt you a blow which, an inch lower, would have killed you—so the doctor has said.'
All the life had gone out of his face as I ceased speaking. His lips trembled. 'Then—it was not she?' he said brokenly.
'My dear fellow,' I put my hand upon his, 'listen: Until the next morning she did not know you were here, but after reading that letter I could not help believing that you were the man of whom she wrote, and I went to her, told her of my meeting with you, described you, and saw at once that she recognised you. Then I told her how you had been attacked, and the next morning I brought her and her aunt to see you. I don't want to flatter you, and I can't betray a lady; but while it was not she that night upon the bridge—and in your own sober senses and free of Cupid's blindness you would be among the first to know that it could not be she—she is now very near, and she is only waiting to be told that she may come to see, with her own eyes, that you are better, and that you will be glad to see her.'
'Glad!' How much the one word said, but in a moment he looked up.' But—these men—how do you know——'
'About the attack? I saw it. I had been following, watching you and them.'