Violet sighed with misery, like one who hears the unfavorable verdict of a doctor. "Oh, don't!" she murmured.
"I am sorry to offend your ears," said Van Hupfeldt, looking with interest at his nails, for they had nearly dug into the palms of his hands a few minutes earlier, "but it was necessary to tell you this. This is not the sort of man who ought ever to have entered your presence. How, by the way, did you come to know him?"
"I met him by chance at my sister's grave. He told me that he is the tenant of the flat. He seemed good. I don't know what to do!" She let herself fall into a chair, leaned her head on her hand, and stared miserably into vacancy, while Van Hupfeldt, limping nearer, said over her:
"You ought to promise me, Violet, never again to allow yourself to hold any sort of communication with this person. You will hardly, indeed, be able to see him again, for Mrs. Mordaunt has just been telling me of her sudden resolve to go down to Rigsworth to-morrow morning."
"So she says; and perhaps on the whole it is best, don't you think?"
Violet shrugged hopeless shoulders. "I don't care one bit either way," she said.
"So, then, that is agreed between us. You won't ever write to him again."
"I don't undertake anything of that kind," she retorted. "I must have time to think. Are you quite sure that all this infamy is the God's truth? It is as if you said that mountain streams ran ink. The man told me that there were certificates. They fell out of a picture-frame, he said. He looked true, he seemed good and honest; he is a young man with dark-blue eyes--"
"I don't know that yet, I have no certain proof. I was to see him this evening."
"To see him? Ah, but never again, never again! And would you now, after hearing--"
"I am not sure. I must have time to think, I must have proof. I have no proof. It is hard on me, after all."
"What is hard on you?" demanded Van Hupfeldt; and, had not the girl been so distraught, she would have seen that he had the semblance more of a murderer than of a lover. "What proofs do you want beyond my word? The man said that there were certificates, did he not? Well, let him produce them. The fact that he can't is a proof that there were none."
"Not quite. No--there is a doubt. He should have the benefit of the doubt. A man should not be condemned before he is tried, after all. If Miss L'Estrange was to say that there were no certificates, that would be proof. You must know her address--give it to me, and let me go straight to her--"