He did not speak loudly, but his voice was none the less impressive on that account. I endeavoured my hardest to be stern.
‘I confess that you disappoint me, Mr Lessingham. I have always understood that you were a man of unusual strength; you appear instead, to be a man of extraordinary weakness; with an imagination so ill-governed that its ebullitions remind me of nothing so much as feminine hysterics. Your wild language is not warranted by circumstances. I repeat that I think it quite possible that by to-morrow morning she will be returned to you.’
‘Yes,—but how? as the Marjorie I have known, as I saw her last,—or how?’
That was the question which I had already asked myself, in what condition would she be when we had succeeded in snatching her from her captor’s grip? It was a question to which I had refused to supply an answer. To him I lied by implication.
‘Let us hope that, with the exception of being a trifle scared, she will be as sound and hale and hearty as ever in her life.’
‘Do you yourself believe that she’ll be like that,—untouched, unchanged, unstained?’
Then I lied right out,—it seemed to me necessary to calm his growing excitement.
‘I do.’
‘You don’t!’
‘Mr Lessingham!’