“Where is the man?—where is that man?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him after that—oh, yes, he came back again once. But Papa was watching and saved me from him—and after that I never heard of him. Yes, I did hear someone say he went to sea.”
Another hush and then Ernest’s voice, pinched with emotion:
“I believe if I could find that villain I could almost kill him. My soul is full of murder. God forgive me!”
He thought of his own soul first.
Poor Immy suffered the desolation of a girl who finds her hero common clay; her saint a prig. But with apology she said:
“I ought never to have told you.”
He dazed her by his reply:
“Oh, I won’t tell anybody; never fear! But don’t tell me any more just now. I must think it out.”
He wanted to think!—at a time when thinking was poltroon; when only feeling and impulsive action were decent! Immy waited while he thought. At length he said: