“I have to thank you, Miss Raynsworth,” he said, gently, “for giving me your confidence. You will find it has not been misplaced. You have done the best thing possible in telling me what you have done. Though—” he hesitated, “it is best to be perfectly candid,” he went on, “I cannot but own that it is—a terrible disappointment to me to have to associate anything of so extraordinary a kind with one whom—”
Philippa turned upon him abruptly, her face crimsoning. Something in his measured tone, more than in his actual words, began slowly to insinuate into her a strange, chill misgiving. And why at that moment did there recur to her memory, in advantageous contrast to Mr Gresham’s carefully considered and gently expressed disapproval, his cousin Michael’s stern, almost rough censure of what she had done?
Before she had time to open her lips, her companion began again.
“Excuse me,” he said, “for interrupting you—I think you were going to speak. I must ask you to listen to me first. I will be perfectly frank. I was not wholly unprepared for this strange disclosure. The incident at Cannes never quite left my memory, and it was followed up by certain remarks or hints as to something peculiar in which you had been mixed up, which came to my ears more recently.”
“How? and where?” demanded Philippa. For one half instant the thought crossed her brain—could Michael Gresham have been faithless to his trust?—but it was as quickly dismissed. Rough and rugged he might be, but true, she felt certain he was.
“I scarcely know that I have any right to reply to your question,” said Mr Gresham, “and no purpose would be fulfilled by my doing so. All that was said to me was very vague, so vague that I have allowed myself to be buoyed up by hopes—now alas! shattered—that the warn—hints I should say, rested on no real foundation. But do not mistake me, Miss Raynsworth,” as Philippa again seemed on the point of speaking.
“Your confidence, I repeat, has not been misplaced. I do not think—no, deliberately speaking—I do not think any lasting annoyance or ill-results need be anticipated—especially when—” But here even his self-assurance shrank from completing the sentence. “I want to say,” he went on, “that notwithstanding all the pain and regret which I cannot deny I am feeling, my attitude towards you is not radically shaken. In time, I trust and believe, the whole miserable episode will be forgotten—not only by the few outsiders who may have suspected any mystery, but by myself.”
He glanced at Philippa as he spoke, expecting to detect a flush of grateful relief on her face. What he did see there, was less easy to interpret. She was no longer red, though, on the other hand, but slightly paler than usual, and she turned her eyes fully upon him without uttering a word.
“I must express myself still more plainly,” he said, almost as if addressing a child, “as my wife, there will, I feel sure, be nothing, comparatively speaking, to dread in the future. Your candour has disarmed my scruples, for I know I can trust that never, under any conceivable circumstances, could you again be tempted so to set propriety and—and dignity at nought.”
Still she did not speak.