"Well, when I got to Kilcash, I kept my ears open, and soon I heard that you were about to leave Kilcash House and take a house in or near London. I inquired still further, found out the day you were to leave, and got the address of the house you had taken. I came on to London. "I arrived here the night before last. I knew you could not be in your new house until late in the day. I wanted to call most particularly. There was not an hour to be lost. It was neck or nothing with me. I resolved to call at Crescent House that very night, and I did." "You did?" she said, in a voice like a terrified echo. "You knew I was there. He told you?" "No; go on. Go on, I say. You did not ask for me?" "No. I wanted to see him." "It was close to eleven, or after it then?" "After it." "And you wanted to see him at such an hour, and you knew he was an invalid?" she said, scornfully. "I was an invalid myself." "You! What was the matter with you?"--again that tone of scorn. "A worse disease than his--poverty." "What!" she cried, leaving the mantelpiece, and going a step towards him in the dark. "I thought you got the price of your--of _me_ before." "Marion, you are unjust--cruelly unjust. When I called on your husband last night, it was not to _beg_ or to try and get money from him, because of anything in which you or I ever took part. I had a claim with which you have no connection, and the nature of which I will not divulge to you. He may if he likes." "He never will," she said, with something between a laugh and a sob. "So be it. It may be all the better the matter should never be spoken of. But to proceed. I knocked and he let me in. He explained that you were gone to bed, and that he and you were alone in the house. He was very polite, for he had an idea of why I came--or rather of the card of introduction, so to speak, that I brought with me. He made me take a chair, told me he was not well enough to lie down, as he had one of his bad attacks of asthma, though by no means a very bad one, and we had a pleasant general conversation for half-an-hour or so." "Pleasant conversation!" she cried, falling back to her old position at the chimney-piece. "Yes, I assure you it was quite a pleasant conversation. He told me all the incidents of your journey over from Ireland, and I amused him with my experiences on the Continent." "This is too ghastly," she said. "Do not tell me any more about it. Did he give you--what you came for?" "Oh, yes, or part of it." "And then?" she asked, in a hard, constrained voice. "And then after a few more words I stood up and said good-bye, left the house, and came back to town." "Wait," she said. "I will give you another chance. Sit where you are. I shall be back in a few minutes." "In the dark?" he asked. "Yes. Is there anything in the dark that frightens you?" "No," he answered; "but it is stupid to sit in the dark alone." "Perhaps when I am gone you may not be quite alone. You may have memories for company."