"Because he told me so," answers she impatiently; "he is at the Grande Bretagne, and he was complaining of not being comfortable there, and I was advising him to move to another hotel, and he said, 'Oh no, it was not worth while, as he was leaving Florence to-morrow.'"
Jim draws a long breath, and leans back in his corner of the fiacre. He has gained the information he sought. It has come to his hand at the very time he was chafing most at his inability to go in quest of it.
"So your interruption was the more provoking," continues Cecilia, her indignation puffing out and ruffling its feathers at the recollection of her wrongs, "as it was our last chance of meeting; however, you cut your own throat, as he evidently knew something very interesting about your dear friends; something which he does not generally tell people, and which he would not have told me only that he saw at once I was no blab."
Jim shivers. He had only just been in time then—only just in time to stop the mouth of this blatant backbiter in priest's raiment. His companion looks at him curiously.
"Are you cold," she asks, "or did a goose walk over your grave? Why did you shiver?"
He pulls himself together. "I was shivering," he says, compelling himself to assume the rallying tone in which he is apt to address the girl beside him, "at the thought of the peril I had saved you from. My poor Cis, have not you and I suffered enough already at the hands of the Church?"
She reddens. "Though I do not pretend to any great sensitiveness on the subject, I think you have worn that old joke nearly off its legs."
But during the rest of the drive she utters no further lament over her lost clergyman.