The insidious voice told him quite gently that this emergency might indeed arise; it pointed out to him the quite conceivable events that might occur from it; it assured him that it had no possible desire that he should break his promise in any way. He was not to dream of giving any explanation to the Duchessa, but that he would owe it to himself, _and to her_, to give her the faintest hint that at a future date he _could_ give her an explanation. That was all. There would be no breaking of his promise. She could not possibly even guess at what that explanation might be. She would merely realize that _something_ underlay the present appearances.
The proposition sounded perfectly reasonable, perfectly just. His own common sense told him that there could be no harm in it. It was the rightful solution of the difficulty, arrived at by silencing that first loud voice,--the voice which had clearly wished him to abandon all consideration of the matter, that he might be surprised into giving a full explanation of the situation.
After all, he had been torturing himself needlessly. She herself had spoken of trust. Should that trust totter for an instant, would not the faintest possible hint be sufficient to re-establish it on a firm basis?
With the thought, the little square of casement window came back once more to his vision. He saw through it an old-fashioned rose bush of crimson roses in the garden; he heard a bird twitter, and call to its mate. The abnormal had vanished, reduced itself once more to plain wholesome common sense. And then suddenly, and without warning, a sentence flashed through his brain.
Antony sat up, clenching his hands furiously between his knees. It was absurd, preposterous. There was no smallest occasion to take those words in such a desperately literal sense.
"In short, he will do all in his power to give the impression that he is simply and solely Michael Field, working-man, and under-gardener at Chorley Old Hall."
The words rang as clearly in his brain as if there were someone in the room speaking them aloud. Once more the window vanished. There were no voices speaking now; there was only a curious and rather horrible silence, in which there was no need for voices.