"You knew him better perhaps years ago? You knew him when he was master of himself, when he first came here. He is, he tells me, an English university man, and in the course of our conversation one day he quoted from 'In Memoriam' in the intervals of a semi-drunken confession."
He now had all her attention; she tried to maintain her proud air, but something was working in her to the exclusion of all coquetry, all dissimulation.
"If you know him so well, why—why come to me for information? Of course any one living here, as you say, must have met him."
"But he has spoken to me of you as if he knew you very well, as if——" He could not continue, and even in her own uneasiness she felt a pity and tenderness for him.
"Why do you bother yourself about us—about him, I mean? Or me. I shall be going away soon, I hope; you will not remain all your life in such a little place as St. Ignace; try and forget what he has said."
"I cannot. It is with me day and night. Tell me if it is true!"
"Why should I tell you?"
"Because I must know. Because, if a lie, such a tale must be traced back from where it came—the black imagination of a depraved and incorrigible villain. Because if true, if true——" his voice failed him, and although it was now quite dark, Miss Clairville could detect great excitement in his usually calm and pleasantly austere manner.
She leant to him over the balcony.
"But I cannot tell you here! I cannot go to you; will you then come to me? There will be none upstairs at this hour in this house; they are all gone to see the boat come in at the wharf. There is her whistle now! Would you mind coming very much, Mr. Ringfield? Do you think it wrong of me to ask you?"