"You ought to know her better than I do; in fact, I don't know her at all."
Vincent was silent for a second.
"No; I should not have imagined it of her. It seems incredible. But if you don't know her personally, perhaps you know what is thought of her? What is her general reputation?"
"Her reputation? I can hardly answer that question. I should say," Mr. Griswold went on, in his slow and deliberate manner, "that there is a kind of—a kind of impression—that, so long as the money was forthcoming, Mrs. de Lara would not be too anxious to inquire where it came from."
"She was at the Captain's table!" Vincent exclaimed.
"Ship captains don't know much about what is going on on shore," was the reply. "Besides, if Mrs. de Lara wanted to sit at the Captain's table, it's at the Captain's table you would find her, and that without much delay! In any case why are you so anxious to find out about Mrs. de Lara's peculiarities—apart from her being a very pretty woman?"
"Oh," said Vincent, as he rose to apologise once more for this intrusion, and to say good-night, "one is always meeting with new experiences. Another lesson in the ways of the world, I suppose."
But all the same, as he walked slowly and thoughtfully back to his hotel, he kept saying to himself that he would rather not believe that Mrs. de Lara had betrayed him and was an accomplice in this shameless attempt to make money out of him. Nay, he said to himself that he would refuse to believe until he was forced to believe: though he did not go a step further, and proceed to ask himself the why and wherefore of this curious reluctance.
CHAPTER III.
WEST AND EAST.