"I should think that no one would do that." There is not a touch of asperity in the dove-soft voice; but there is a shade of dignity. "When he was ill--while he was delirious" ("How dreadfully unpleasant it is!" in an anguished internal aside)--"I could not help hearing--gathering--drawing inferences." The ardour of the chase has vanquished her charity, and she is looking at her victim. But, to do her justice, the success of her labours shocks her. Can this little aged, pinched face, with its dilated eyes, so full of woe and terror, be the same one that dimpled into riotous laughter half an hour ago at the sight of the two dirty old men, in Jewish gaberdines and with gingham umbrellas, kissing each other by the Mosquée de la Pêcherie? "Of course it was all incoherent," she goes on hurriedly, snatching at the first expression that occurs to her as likely to undo, or at least a little modify, her work--"nothing that one could make sense of. Only your name recurred so incessantly; it was nothing but 'Elizabeth, Elizabeth.' I am sure"--with a remorseful if clumsy attempt to be kind, and a most uneasy smile--"that I do not wonder at it!" In the narrow interspace between the blocks and the path--not more than a couple of fingers wide--how the sea forces itself! and up race its foam-fountains, throwing their spray aloft in such mighty play, as if they would hit heaven's arch. What exhilaration in its great glad noise, superb and battle-ready! "I cannot express how distasteful a task this is to me"--in a tone that certainly gives no reason to doubt the truth of her statement; "but, after all, I am his mother; he is all I have in the world, and I am sure that you are the very last person who would wish to do him an injury." "No; I do not think that I would do him an injury." How curiously still and slow her voice is! Mrs. Byng has resolutely averted her eyes, so that her purpose may not again be shaken by the sight of the havoc she has wrought, and has fixed them upon some sea gulls that are riding up and down upon the merry waves, making them, with their buoyant motion, even more jocund than they were before. "It seems an impossible thing to say to you--a thing too bad to apologize for--but yet I _must_ say it"--in a tone of excessive distress, yet firmness. "Under the circumstances, it would--would throw a blight over his whole life." "Yes, I know that it would; I have always known it; that is why we left Florence." "And very good it was of you, too! Not that I am quite certain of the judiciousness of the way in which you did it; but, however, I am sure you meant it for the best." "Yes, I meant it for the best."