Vanderlin was silent; he, like the royal person on the golfing-ground, had difficulty in imagining her in these circumstances. He wondered what she was aiming at—what she desired.
“I did what I could,” she repeated; “he suffered greatly; he was completely paralyzed; but for a few moments he recovered his speech a little, and he made me understand—various things.”
She paused, hoping to excite his curiosity, wishing to induce him to interrogate her. But he remained mute; he was used to listening in silence whilst people revealed to him their necessities, described their projects, or endeavored to awaken his sympathies.
She was discouraged and embarrassed. Changing her manner she said with her natural abruptness.
“You were much attached to your wife, were you not?”
She had the pleasure of seeing his composure rudely disturbed; an expression of extreme pain, a flush of extreme offence, came on his face: an unhealed wound had been roughly touched.
“On that subject,” he said briefly, “I allow no one to speak to me. I told you so at Les Mouettes.”
“But I am going to speak to you!” said Mouse with her more natural manner, “whether you allow it or whether you don’t. As I tell you, I will be quite frank with you,” she continued with a graceful embarrassment which became her infinitely. “I had wished to know you, to attract you if I could. Say it was vanity, necessity, love of money—what you will; I admit that I had that idea when I was so hospitably received by you.”
A gesture of impatience escaped him; she was telling him nothing that he did not know.
“But,” she pursued, “when I had that brief conversation with you after luncheon at your house, I understood that your heart was closed to all except one memory. With the prior knowledge I possessed of your wife’s father, and the recollection of certain hints he had given me, I conceived the idea that he could if he chose establish her innocence. I determined to try and persuade him to do so if he possessed the power as I thought. I went for that purpose to Monte Carlo; and on reaching there I learned that he had been struck down by hemiplegia at the tables.”