now_ him?"

Surprised, she answered less brightly: "Yes, I know him."

"You knew him better perhaps years ago? You knew him when he was
master of himself, when he first came here. He is, he tells me, an
English university man, and in the course of our conversation one day
he quoted from 'In Memoriam' in the intervals of a semi-drunken
confession."

He now had all her attention; she tried to maintain her proud air, but
something was working in her to the exclusion of all coquetry, all
dissimulation.

"If you know him so well, why--why come to me for information? Of
course any one living here, as you say, must have met him."

"But he has spoken to me of you as if he knew you very well, as if----"
He could not continue, and even in her own uneasiness she felt a pity
and tenderness for him.

"Why do you bother yourself about us--about him, I mean? Or me. I
shall be going away soon, I hope; you will not remain all your life in
such a little place as St. Ignace; try and forget what he has said."

"I cannot. It is with me day and night. Tell me if it is true!"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Because I must know. Because, if a lie, such a tale must be traced
back from where it came--the black imagination of a depraved and
incorrigible villain. Because if true, if true----" his voice failed
him, and although it was now quite dark, Miss Clairville could detect
great excitement in his usually calm and pleasantly austere manner.

She leant to him over the balcony.

"But I cannot tell you here! I cannot go to you; will you then come to
me? There will be none upstairs at this hour in this house; they are
all gone to see the boat come in at the wharf. There is her whistle
now! Would you mind coming very much, Mr. Ringfield? Do you think it
wrong of me to ask you?"

"Wrong, Miss Clairville?"

"Improper, I mean. Even here there are the _convenances_, the
proprieties."

"Proprieties! When we are talking of our immortal souls and of our
hopes of salvation! When truth is at stake, your character, your
future perhaps--think if that had been told to anyone else!" he
exclaimed half to himself.

"Then you will come?" Miss Clairville's tone was full of a radiant
incredulity. She leant still farther towards him, and her eyes burned
into the surrounding darkness of the night.

"I will come at once. I--if I meet anyone I can say that I am calling
on you to hear about your brother."

She smiled, then frowned, i