"Yes; just at first."
"Take it for all in all this has been a sensational evening," he resumed, laughing. "My accident at the window; your discovery of the marked money in your box; and the visitation of the police. Private families cannot in general boast of so much entertainment all at once."
I looked at him wistfully. After the intense agitation and dread he had betrayed, this light tone sounded very unnatural; almost like a mocking make-believe.
"Mr. Chandos, I fear you live in some great peril," was my timid rejoinder. "I suppose I may not be told what it is; but I wish I could ease you; I wish I could avert it from you, whatever it may be."
As if by magic, his mood changed, and the dark shade came back to his countenance. "So you won't let me cheat myself, Anne! I was trying if I could do it."
"If you would but tell me what it is! If I could avert it from you!"
"No living being can do that, child. I wish I could forget it, if only for a moment."
"And you cannot?"
"Never; by night or by day. I appear as the rest of the world does; I laugh, I talk; but within lies ever that one terrible care, weighing me down like an incubus."
How terrible it was, I could see even then, as he covered his eyes for a moment with his wasted hand.