“I am here on purpose to ask you certain questions,” he resumed, “which I can but trust that you will answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. Will you not be seated?”
She did not answer him in words, but drew herself together as it were, and crossing to the opposite side of the room sat down. By this she had recovered from her fright, and her features had settled into a sort of stony hardness which effectually masked whatever emotions might be at work below.
John too sat down, but there was nearly the entire width of the room between them.
“I want you,” he went on, “to carry your mind back to that letter, written by you nearly twenty years ago, in which you told me that our child was dead, that you had come to the conclusion you and I would be happier apart, and that you were on the eve of returning to your friends in Italy. You have not forgotten the letter of which I speak?”
“I have not forgotten it.”
“After you had left Barrytown and started on your journey, what happened to you? Did you go direct to New York and at once take ship there?”
“I went direct to New York, but a few hours before the vessel sailed by which I had booked my passage I was seized with a fever and conveyed to a hospital, where I lay for weeks, part of the time out of my mind, and the other part so weak that speech was an impossibility.”
“And when you came back to health and strength, it was to find that while you had been in the hospital your maid, a woman of the name of Martha Griggs, had absconded with all your belongings.”
It was a bold guess on John Clare’s part, but it told.
Giovanna half started to her feet and then sat down again. The mask of apathy fell from her face and a great wonder and curiosity took the place of it. “How did you discover that?” she gasped.