“Miss Roseberry,” he repeated, approaching her.
She looked up at him with a start.
“May I venture to ask you something?” he said, gently.
She shrank at the question.
“Don’t suppose I am speaking out of mere curiosity,” he went on. “And pray don’t answer me unless you can answer without betraying any confidence which may have been placed in you.”
“Confidence!” she repeated. “What confidence do you mean?”
“It has just struck me that you might have felt more than a common interest in the questions which you put to me a moment since,” he answered. “Were you by any chance speaking of some unhappy woman—not the person who frightened you, of course—but of some other woman whom you know?”
Her head sank slowly on her bosom. He had plainly no suspicion that she had been speaking of herself: his tone and manner both answered for it that his belief in her was as strong as ever. Still those last words made her tremble; she could not trust herself to reply to them.
He accepted the bending of her head as a reply.
“Are you interested in her?” he asked next.