"Sh-h-h-h-h...."
Still he pestered her.
"Really it is a blunder.... We—we become—eavesdroppers—! Let us—I suggest to you——"
"Oh, do keep quiet," she whispered irritably; and in that instant the talk of Osborne and Rosalind became audible to her. She heard him say:
"Yes, I confess I have known Osborne, and I believe the man perfectly incapable of the act attributed to him by a hasty public opinion."
"Intimately known him?"
Rosalind turned her eyebrows upward in the moonlight. Seen thus, she was amazingly beautiful.
"Do we intimately know anyone? Do we intimately know ourselves?" asked Osborne as he passed within five yards of the two on the path. "I think I may say that I know Osborne about as well as I know anyone, and I am confident that he is horribly misjudged. He is a young man of—yes, I will say that for him—of good intentions; and he is found guilty, without trial, of a wrong which he never could have committed—and the wrong which he has committed he is not found guilty of."
"What wrong?" asked Rosalind.
"I have heard—I know, in fact—that in the short time that has passed since the murder of Miss de Bercy, Osborne, her acknowledged lover, has allowed himself to love another."