"Ah," he exclaimed, with a deep sigh, "and where is she?"
Miss Ford scrutinised him with a long glance: then she said:
"Don't you know where Lilian Temple is?"
Beneath that glance, and at those words, he was lost and showed his loss. He stammered:
"I don't know: how could I know?"
"But you ought to know," added Miss Ford, looking at him.
"That is true; perhaps I ought to know," he replied, without understanding what she said.
"In her letters she always told you what she was doing, and where she was going," added the old maid, in a firm, precise tone.
"Yes," he replied, throwing her a desperate glance.
Miss Ford lowered her face behind her black veil and became silent, as if she were gathering together her ideas. Confronted with her, silent and convulsed, Lucio Sabini waited for her words, incapable of saying anything unless he were asked. Then she asked him calmly, with cold courtesy: