Duplessis looked him full in the face. “Really, I don’t know what business you have to ask me that.”
“Then I’ll tell you, if you please,” said Senhouse. “When she left the North she did not, I believe, go directly to London. She went to Blackheath, to her people. There she saw you.”
“Who told you that, Sir?” Duplessis was angry.
“She told me that she should see you there. It had not been her intention; but she changed her mind.”
“Then I have to thank you, Mr. Senhouse, for an insufferable interference in my affairs,” said Duplessis.
“I advised her to see you—yes. Come, now,” he said with a change of tone which Duplessis found hard to bear, “you have had your innings, I was careful not to touch on that. You have had more than one, if I don’t mistake you. I think now that I go in.”
Duplessis was not the man to give candour for candour. His eyes were steady on his enemy. “I don’t give ladies’ addresses without their leave, you know.”
“You may assume it here. When I saw Mrs. Germain in Cumberland she gave me to understand that she might wish to see me again.”
“If she had wished it,” said Duplessis, “I suppose she would have told you where she was. Apparently she does not wish it.”
“Obviously you do not,” Senhouse replied; “and I have reasons for putting your wish and her action together. And, as a matter of fact, she could not let me know anything, because I have no certain address.”