"Do you think you are a good judge of where your confidence in a matter of this importance should end?"
"I think I am. At all events, I shall be reticent if I consider it better not to speak."
"Well, then, go on, Marion, and tell me all you may. Mind, the more I know the more likely I am able to be of use to you."
She passed the hand not resting on the table across her forehead.
"Sit down," she said. "I can speak with greater ease while you are sitting."
He took a chair directly opposite her, and she began:
"All that I said at the inquest is true, and I told the whole truth in answer to any questions I was asked; but I did not say all that was in my mind. I have had bitter trials in my life. I will not refer again to what was once between you and me; and, remember, in anything I may say I shall have no thought of that. I put that away from my mind altogether, and it will be ungenerous of you if you draw any deduction towards our relations in the past from anything I may say. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly, Marion. I know you too well to fancy for a moment you could be guilty of the mean cowardice of talking at any one. Go on."
"Thank you. I am glad you think I am no coward." She still kept her hand before her face, as though to concentrate her attention upon her mental vision. "As I said at that awful inquest, there was never anything ever so slightly like a quarrel between Mr. Davenport and me. Except that we lived almost exclusively at Kilcash House, which was dull, I had little or nothing to complain of; and the great quiet and isolation of that place did not affect me much, for I had small or no desire to go out into the world, and after a few years it would have given me more pain than pleasure to have to mingle in society. Very shortly after my marriage I met Michael Fahey for the first time----"
"What was he like?" asked Blake, interrupting her.