“I should wait.”
“For what purpose?”
“If you will allow me to use the language of the card-table, I should wait till the woman shows her hand.”
“She has shown it.”
“May I ask when?”
“This morning.”
Mr. Le Frank said no more. If he was really wanted, Mrs. Gallilee had only to speak. After a last moment of hesitation, the pitiless necessities of her position decided her once more. “You see me too ill to move,” she said; “the first thing to do, is to tell you why.”
She related the plain facts; without a word of comment, without a sign of emotion. But her husband’s horror of her had left an impression, which neither pride nor contempt had been strong enough to resist. She allowed the music-master to infer, that contending claims to authority over Carmina had led to a quarrel which provoked the assault. The secret of the words that she had spoken, was the one secret that she kept from Mr. Le Frank.
“While I was insensible,” she proceeded, “my niece was taken away from me. She has been suffering from nervous illness; she was naturally terrified—and she is now at the nurse’s lodgings, too ill to be moved. There you have the state of affairs, up to last night.”
“Some people might think,” Mr. Le Frank remarked, “that the easiest way out of it, so far, would be to summon the nurse for the assault.”