“There are places within half a mile of everywhere in this town,” he said, “where one can be as secure from observation as if one were in a back street of the city of Damascus. And if I had designed this afternoon for meeting you and talking confidentially with you, nothing could have been better. The people who live in these houses seem always to be asleep or dead, and if they knew our names, they couldn’t recognize us ten feet off. Now,” he continued, “tell me what is troubling you—for I have seen ever since that first glimpse of you that something is preying upon you.” Elizabeth remained silent. “What is it?” asked Clavering again, with authority in his voice. And Elizabeth, still with that strange feeling of being obliged to do what Clavering required, told him the whole story of the necklace. Clavering listened attentively. Elizabeth had tried to keep out of it the personal note, the shame and disappointment and resentment she felt at Pelham’s conduct; but she was dealing with a very astute man, who read her with extraordinary keenness, and who saw the good policy, from his own point of view, of still further embittering her feelings toward Pelham. “I should say that fellow Pelham ought to have shown you a little more consideration, especially as you say he inherited everything.” “Yes.” “A woman, standing alone, is almost bound to fall in with just such brutes as Pelham and that Scotch solicitor. Mind, I say that you were obliged to meet with some men who were traitors, all in fact except those who happen to be in love with you. Look—” he opened his watch, and on the inner case Elizabeth saw a Greek sentence engraved, [Greek: memnêstein apistein]. “You didn’t think I knew Greek. Of course I don’t. No man born and raised in my circumstances ever knew Greek, and I never expect to know it. I have heard about some one of those old classics learning to play the fiddle when he was eighty, and always thought him a great fool for so doing. No, I only had this put in Greek to puzzle fools; it means, ‘Remember to distrust.’ It was a pity that you had not remembered to distrust that Pelham scoundrel.” Elizabeth remained silent and almost stunned at this characterization of Pelham, and Clavering, seeing he had gone far enough in that direction, said:— “If the diamond broker—pawn–broker, I should call him—gave you five hundred pounds on the necklace, it was probably worth fifteen hundred. However, fifteen hundred pounds is a small matter.” “It is a great deal to me and always was, except for that short time in London when we thought ourselves the richest people in the world,” replied Elizabeth. “You may, if you choose, be one of the richest women in America.” [Illustration: “THE LITTLE PARK WAS WHOLLY DESERTED EXCEPT FOR THEMSELVES.”]