“As an older acquaintance of your late wife’s than even you were,” I began, “you must let me say to you something I have on my mind. I shall be glad to make any terms with you that you see fit to name for the information she must have had from George Corvick—the information you know, that had come to him, poor chap, in one of the happiest hours of his life, straight from Hugh Vereker.” He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. “The information—?” “Vereker’s secret, my dear man—the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.” He began to flush—the numbers on his bumps to come out. “Vereker’s books had a general intention?” I stared in my turn. “You don’t mean to say you don’t know it?” I thought for a moment he was playing with me. “Mrs. Deane knew it; she had it, as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinite search and to Vereker’s own delight, found the very mouth of the cave. Where _is_ the mouth? He told after their marriage—and told alone—the person who, when the circumstances were reproduced, must have told you. Have I been wrong in taking for granted that she admitted you, as one of the highest privileges of the relation in which you stood to her, to the knowledge of which she was after Corvick’s death the sole depositary? All I know is that that knowledge is infinitely precious, and what I want you to understand is that if you’ll in your turn admit me to it you’ll do me a kindness for which I shall be lastingly grateful.” He had turned at last very red; I dare say he had begun by thinking I had lost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my own side I stared with a livelier surprise. Then he spoke. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wasn’t acting—it was the absurd truth. “She _didn’t_ tell you—?” “Nothing about Hugh Vereker.” I was stupefied; the room went round. It had been too good even for that! “Upon your honour?” “Upon my honour. What the devil’s the matter with you?” he growled. “I’m astounded—I’m disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you.” “It isn’t in me!” he awkwardly laughed. “And even if it were—” “If it were you’d let me have it—oh yes, in common humanity. But I believe you. I see—I see!” I went on, conscious, with the full turn of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor man’s attitude. What I saw, though I couldn’t say it, was that his wife hadn’t thought him worth enlightening. This struck me as strange for a woman who had thought him worth marrying. At last I explained it by the reflexion that she couldn’t possibly have married him for his understanding. She had married him for something else.