“I hope that foolish girl has not annoyed you—at such a time as this,” he said, very earnestly, when he returned to the sofa. “I can’t tell you how grieved I am at what has happened. I was careful to warn you, as you may remember. Still, if I could only have foreseen—”
I let him proceed no further. No human forethought could have provided against what had happened. Besides, dreadful as the discovery had been, I would rather have made it, and suffered under it, as I was suffering now, than have been kept in the dark. I told him this. And then I turned to the one subject that was now of any interest to me—the subject of my unhappy husband.
“How did he come to this house?” I asked.
“He came here with Mr. Benjamin shortly after I returned,” the Major replied.
“Long after I was taken ill?”
“No. I had just sent for the doctor—feeling seriously alarmed about you.”
“What brought him here? Did he return to the hotel and miss me?”
“Yes. He returned earlier than he had anticipated, and he felt uneasy at not finding you at the hotel.”
“Did he suspect me of being with you? Did he come here from the hotel?”
“No. He appears to have gone first to Mr. Benjamin to inquire about you. What he heard from your old friend I cannot say. I only know that Mr. Benjamin accompanied him when he came here.”