"Not that I am aware of, Oh, no! I'm certain she didn't," Sir Charles replied, looking up again.
"And, of course, in St. Gaved there's nobody she would look at for a moment," Gervase went on.
Sir Charles nibbled for a moment at the end of his penholder. He hardly knew whether to tell Gervase or no. It was but a vague fear at most. For months—so he believed—she had never seen Rufus Sterne, and his name was never mentioned under any circumstances. Gervase was a violent fellow, and if he were made jealous there was no knowing what he might do or say. On the other hand, it was almost certain that he would hear the story of Madeline's adventure on the cliffs sooner or later, and then he would be excessively angry at not having been told by his own people.
On the whole, Sir Charles concluded that he had better let Gervase know all there was to be known. The simple truth might gain in importance in his eyes the longer it was kept from him.
"I don't think, Gervase, you need have the least fear that you have a rival," he said, at length, looking up with what he intended to be a reassuring smile. "There was a little circumstance some months ago that caused me a moment's uneasiness; but only a moment's. I soon saw that it meant nothing, that it never could mean anything, in fact."
"What was the circumstance?" Gervase asked, with a quick light of interest in his eyes.
"Well, it came about in this way," and Sir Charles told in an off-hand and apparently indifferent manner the story of Madeline's escapade.
Gervase listened in gloomy silence, tugging vigorously at his moustache all the time.
"And you say she visited him in his diggings?" he questioned, sullenly, when Sir Charles had finished.