"Why, that you've found out what she has to hide."
"You're perfectly free to ask her. I wonder even that you haven't done
so yet."
"Well," he said with the finest stroke of unconsciousness he had yet
shown me--"well, I suppose it's because I'm afraid of her."
"But not too much afraid," I risked suggesting, "to be hoping at this
moment that you'll find her if you go back to where most of our party is
gathered. You're not going for tea--you're going for Mrs. Server: just
of whom it was, as I say, you were thinking while you sat there with
Lady John. So what is it you so greatly fear?"
It was as if I could see through his dim face a sort of gratitude for my
making all this out to him. "I don't know that it's anything that she
may do to _me_." He could make it out in a manner for himself. "It's as
if something might happen to her. It's what I told you--that she may
break down. If you ask me how, or in what," he continued, "how can I
tell you? In whatever it is that she's trying to do. I don't understand
it." Then he wound up with a sigh that, in spite of its softness, he
imperfectly stifled. "But it's something or other!"
"What would it be, then," I asked, "but what you speak of as what I've
'found out'? The effort you distinguish in her is the effort of
concealment--vain, as I gather it strikes you both, so far as _I_, in my
supernatural acuteness, am concerned."
Following this with the final ease to which my encouragement directly
ministered, he yet gave me, before he had quite arrived, a queer
sidelong glance. "Wouldn't it really be better if you were to tell me? I
don't ask her myself, you see. I don't put things to her in that way."
"Oh, no--I've shown you how I do see. That's a part of your admirable
consideration. But I must repeat that nothing would induce me to tell
you."