"No, Lida."
"I saw her a few days ago."
"Here?"
"Yes. She came here, Mr. Howell, two weeks ago. She looks badly—as if she is worrying."
"Not—about me?" he asked eagerly.
"Yes, about you. What possessed you to go away as you did? When my—bro—when her uncle accused you of something, you ran away, instead of facing things like a man."
"I was trying to find the one person who could clear me, Mrs. Pitman." He sat back, with his eyes closed; he looked ill enough to be in bed.
"And you succeeded?"
"No."
I thought perhaps he had not been eating and I offered him food, as I had once before. But he refused it, with the ghost of his boyish smile.