"It was absolutely natural. In fact, it's quite true.... Shall we go to the meeting now?"
But no, something in her required that he must state in plain words the fact that would justify her accusation, alleged by his eyes to be so unjust: namely, that it was (practically) a member of her family who had done this splendid thing for him. Yet she went rather further than she had intended when she said, glancing away over the queer dusky court:
"I will tell you. Some one gave us to understand--not he himself, of course,--that it was a friend of ours who had done this ... Mr. Hugo Canning."
An uncontrollable desire carried the girl yet further. She said, in a weakening voice:
In saying this, she brought her eyes back fully to her victim. And if ever guilt was written large upon a human countenance, it was upon the face of V. Vivian at that moment. Brightly flushed he was, with an embarrassment painful to witness. And yet, so strange is the way of life, the joy of victory once again seemed to slip from the clutch of Cally Heth. What house of cards was this she had pulled down upon herself?...
"Really, you must appreciate," the man was saying, in a light, dry voice, "I shouldn't feel at liberty to betray a secret of that sort, even if I knew. I'm sorry, but--"
But the girl's sickening sensations of falling through space broke out in faltering speech:
"_Oh!_... Do you _mean_ ..." She halted, to steady herself, and took a fresh start, no better than the first: "Do you mean--that--"
"I mean only, Miss Heth, that I haven't the slightest idea what this is all about. I thought," he said, in a voice of increasing hardness, "that we were talking of the Works. If, at another time, you can give me a few minutes--"
"Was it YOU?" said Carlisle, breaking through his defenses ... "Do you mean--it was YOU, all along?..."
"I mean nothing of any sort. Does it occur to you that these questions are quite unfair?--that they put me in a ..."
She demanded in a small voice: "_Did you buy this house for the Settlement?_"
Shot down with the pointblank question, the tall young man, whose coat was so extremely polished at the elbows, died game, saying with sudden gentleness:
And then there was no sound but the steady beat of the rain upon sidewalk and roofs ...