“May I ask if I am right, sir,” he began, “in believing that you have a very unfavorable opinion of Miss Gwilt? You are quite convinced, I think—”
“My good fellow,” interrupted Pedgift Senior, “why need you be in any doubt about it? You were under Mr. Armadale’s open window all the while I was talking to him; and your ears, I presume, were not absolutely shut.”
Mr. Bashwood showed no sense of the interruption. The little sting of the lawyer’s sarcasm was lost in the nobler pain that wrung him from the wound inflicted by Miss Gwilt.
“You are quite convinced, I think, sir,” he resumed, “that there are circumstances in this lady’s past life which would be highly discreditable to her if they were discovered at the present time?”
“The window was open at the great house, Bashwood; and your ears, I presume, were not absolutely shut.”
Still impenetrable to the sting, Mr. Bashwood persisted more obstinately than ever.
“Unless I am greatly mistaken,” he said, “your long experience in such things has even suggested to you, sir, that Miss Gwilt might turn out to be known to the police?”
Pedgift Senior’s patience gave way. “You have been over ten minutes in this room,” he broke out. “Can you, or can you not, tell me in plain English what you want?”
In plain English—with the passion that had transformed him, the passion which (in Miss Gwilt’s own words) had made a man of him, burning in his haggard cheeks—Mr. Bashwood met the challenge, and faced the lawyer (as, the worried sheep faces the dog) on his own ground.
“I wish to say, sir,” he answered, “that your opinion in this matter is my opinion too. I believe there is something wrong in Miss Gwilt’s past life which she keeps concealed from everybody, and I want to be the man who knows it.”