“Mary,” he said, “I will seek no more to learn your secret; I will only beg of you to promise me that you will not meet that man again--that you will hold no communication with him. If you were to be seen in the company of such a man--talking to him as I saw you last night--what would people think? The world is always ready to put the worst possible construction upon anything unusual that it sees. You will promise me, my dear?” “Alas! alas!” she cried piteously. “I cannot make you such a promise. You will not do me the injustice to believe that I spoke to him of my own free will?” “What, you would have me believe that he possesses sufficient power over you to make you do his bidding? Great God! that can never be!” “That is what I have said to myself day by day; he cannot possess that power over me--he cannot be such a monster as to. . . oh, I cannot speak to you more! Leave me--leave me! I have been a fool and I must pay the penalty of my folly.” Before he could make a reply, the door was opened and Mrs. Bunbury danced into the room, her mother following more sedately and with a word of remonstrance. “Nonsense, dear Mamma,” cried Little Comedy. “What Mary needs is some one who will raise her spirits--Dr. Goldsmith, for instance. He has, I am sure, laughed her out of her whimsies. Have you succeeded, Doctor? Nay, you don't look like it, nor does she, poor thing! I felt certain that you would be in the act of reading a new comedy to her, but I protest it would seem as if it was a tragedy that engrossed your attention. He doesn't look particularly like our agreeable Rattle at the present moment, does he, Mamma? And it was the same at supper last night. It might have been fancied that he was celebrating a great failure instead of a huge success.” For the next quarter of an hour the lively girl chatted away, imitating the various actors who had taken part in the comedy, and giving the author some account of what the friends whom she had met that day said of the piece. He had never before felt the wearisomeness of a perpetually sparkling nature. Her laughter grated upon his ears; her gaiety was out of tune with his mood. He took leave of the family at the first breathing space that the girl permitted him. CHAPTER XVI. He felt that the result of his interview with Mary was to render more mysterious than ever the question which he had hoped to solve. He wondered if he was more clumsy of apprehension than other men, as he had come away from her without learning her secret. He was shrewd enough to know that the majority of men to whom he might give a detailed account of his interview with the girl--a detailed account of his observation of her upon the appearance of Captain Jackson first at the Pantheon, then in the green room of Covent Garden--would have no trouble whatever in accounting for her behaviour upon both occasions. He could see the shrugs of the cynical, the head-shakings of those who professed to be vastly grieved.