"What!" she cried, leaving the mantelpiece, and going a step towards him in the dark. "I thought you got the price of your--of me before."
"Marion, you are unjust--cruelly unjust. When I called on your husband last night, it was not to beg or to try and get money from him, because of anything in which you or I ever took part. I had a claim with which you have no connection, and the nature of which I will not divulge to you. He may if he likes."
"He never will," she said, with something between a laugh and a sob.
"So be it. It may be all the better the matter should never be spoken of. But to proceed. I knocked and he let me in. He explained that you were gone to bed, and that he and you were alone in the house. He was very polite, for he had an idea of why I came--or rather of the card of introduction, so to speak, that I brought with me. He made me take a chair, told me he was not well enough to lie down, as he had one of his bad attacks of asthma, though by no means a very bad one, and we had a pleasant general conversation for half-an-hour or so."
"Pleasant conversation!" she cried, falling back to her old position at the chimney-piece.
"Yes, I assure you it was quite a pleasant conversation. He told me all the incidents of your journey over from Ireland, and I amused him with my experiences on the Continent."
"This is too ghastly," she said. "Do not tell me any more about it. Did he give you--what you came for?"
"Oh, yes, or part of it."
"And then?" she asked, in a hard, constrained voice.
"And then after a few more words I stood up and said good-bye, left the house, and came back to town."