“I don’t know,” said he. “Mrs. Fontaine and myself are at your mercy.”
“Umph!” said Clementina again. She paused, glanced shrewdly at his face, as he sat forward in the chair on the opposite side of the window, twisting nervous fingers and staring out across the street.
“Tell me your story—frankly—of Dr. Quixtus,” she said at last, “from the time of the Marrable trial. As many details as you can remember. I want to know.”
Huckaby obeyed. He was, as he said, at her mercy. His story confirmed Vandermeer’s, but it covered a wider ground, and, told with truer perception, cast the desired light on dark places. She learned for the first time—for hitherto she had concerned herself little with Quixtus’s affairs—the fact of his disinheritance, Quixtus having, one raging day, revealed to Huckaby the history of the cynical will. She questioned him about Will Hammersley. His account of Quixtus’s half-given and hastily snatched confidence was a lightning flash.
Clementina rose, aghast, and walked about the room. The idea of such a horror had never entered her head. Hammersley and Angela—it was incredible, impossible. There must have been some awful hallucination. That Hammersley, Bayard without fear and without reproach, and Angela, quiet, colourless saint, could have done this thing baffled all imaginings of human passion. It was inconceivable, ludicrous, grotesque. But to Quixtus it was real. He believed it. It lay at the root of his disorder. Even now, with his disorder cured, he believed it still. She was rent with his anguish.
“My God! How he must have suffered!”
“And in spite of everything,” said Huckaby, “he is as tender to Hammersley’s little daughter as if she were his own.”
She swooped upon him in her abrupt fashion.
“Thank you for that. You’ve got a heart somewhere about you.”
She sat down again. “When do you think this suspicion, or whatever it was, crossed his mind? Let us go back.”