The suggestion excited the ire of the governess. "He has been telling you to say so!" she said, menace in every tone of her voice, every gesture of her lifted hand.
Cyril opened his eyes to their utmost width. He could not understand why the governess should be asking him this, or why Herbert's movements should concern her. "I know nothing at all about it," he answered; and, so far, he spoke the truth. "I don't know that Herbert goes anywhere in particular of an evening. If he does, he would not tell me."
She laid her hand heavily on his shoulder; she brought her face—terrible in its livid earnestness—almost into contact with his. "Ecoutez, mon ami," she whispered to the amazed Cyril. "If you are going to play this game with me, I will play one with you. Who wore the cloak to that boucherie, and got the money?—who ripped out the écossais side afterwards, leaving it all mangled and open? Think you, I don't know? Ah, ha! Monsieur Cyril, you cannot play the farce with me!"
Cyril's face turned ghastly, drops of sweat broke out over his forehead. "Hush!" he cried, looking round in the instinct of terror, lest listeners should be at hand.
"Yes; you say, 'Hush!'" she resumed. "I will hush if you don't make me speak. I have hushed ever since. You tell me what I want to know, and I'll hush always."
"Mademoiselle Varsini!" he cried, his manner too painfully earnest for her to doubt now that he spoke the truth: "I declare that I know nothing of Herbert's movements. I don't know where he goes or what he does. When I told you I supposed he went to billiards, I said what I thought might be the case. He may go to fifty places of an evening, for all I can tell. Tell me what it is you want found out, and I will try and do it."
Cyril was not one to play the spy on his brother; in fact, as he had just classically observed to the young lady, Herbert would have "pitched into" him, had he found him attempting it. And serve him right! But Cyril saw that he was in her power; and that made all the difference. He would now have tracked Herbert to the ends of the earth at her bidding.
But she did not bid him. Quite the contrary. She took her hand from Cyril's shoulder, opened the door, and said she did not want him any longer. "It is no matter," cried she; "I wanted to learn something about Monsieur Herbert, for a reason; but if you do not know it, let it pass. It is no matter."
Cyril departed; first of all lifting his cowardly face. It looked a coward's then. "You'll keep counsel, mademoiselle?"
"Yes. When people don't offend me, I don't offend them."