When she came within hearing of those in the room below, she heard a male voice that was not Dr. Vereker's. Yes, the man (whom we still cannot speak of by a name) was saying something—slowly, perhaps—but fairly articulately and intelligibly.
She went very deliberately, and listened in the doorway. She looked very pale, and very interested—a face of fixed attention, of absorption in something she was irresolute about, rather than of doubt about what she heard; an expression rather out of proportion to the concurrent facts, as we know them.
"What is so strange"—this is what the man was saying, in his slow way—"is that I could find words to tell you, if I could remember what it is I have to tell. But when I try to bring it back, my head fails. Tell me again, mademoiselle, about the railway-carriage." Sally wondered why she was mademoiselle, but recognised a tone of deference in his use of the word. She did as he asked her, slightly interrupting her narrative to make sure of getting the tea made right as she did so.
"I trod on your foot, you know. (One, two, three spoonfuls.) Surely you must remember that? (Four, and a little one for the pot.)"
"I have completely forgotten it."
"Then I was sorry, and said I would have come off sooner if I had known it was a foot. You must remember that?" The man half smiled as he shook a slow-disclaiming head—one that would have remembered so gladly, if it could. "Then," continues Sally, "I saw your thumb-ring for rheumatism."
"My thumb-ring!" He presses his fingers over his closed eyes, as though to give Memory a better chance by shutting off the visible present, then withdraws them. "No, I remember no ring at all."
"How extraordinary!"
"I remember a violent concussion somewhere—I can't say where—and then finding myself in a cab, trying to speak to a lady whose face seemed familiar to me, but who she could be I had not the slightest idea. Then I tried to get out of the cab, and found I could not move—or hardly."
"Look at mamma again! Here she is, come." For Mrs. Nightingale has come into the room, looking white. "Yes, mother dear, I have. Quite full up to the brim. Only it isn't ready to pour yet." This last concerns the tea.