I had an impression that Iffield wouldn’t, but I didn’t communicate it, for I wanted to pacify my friend, whom I had discomposed too much for the purposes of my sitting.  I recollect that I did some good work that morning, but it also comes back to me that before we separated he had practically revealed to me that my anecdote, connecting itself in his mind with a series of observations at the time unconscious and unregistered, had covered with light the subject of our colloquy.  He had had a formless perception of some secret that drove Miss Saunt to subterfuges, and the more he thought of it the more he guessed this secret to be the practice of making believe she saw when she didn’t and of cleverly keeping people from finding out how little she saw.  When one pieced things together it was astonishing what ground they covered.  Just as he was going away he asked me from what source at Folkestone the horrid tale had proceeded.  When I had given him, as I saw no reason not to do, the name of Mrs. Meldrum he exclaimed:  “Oh I know all about her; she’s a friend of some friends of mine!” At this I remembered wilful Betty and said to myself that I knew some one who would probably prove more wilful still.

CHAPTER VIII

A few days later I again heard Dawling on my stairs, and even before he passed my threshold I knew he had something to tell.

“I’ve been down to Folkestone—­it was necessary I should see her!” I forget whether he had come straight from the station; he was at any rate out of breath with his news, which it took me however a minute to apply.

“You mean that you’ve been with Mrs. Meldrum?”

“Yes, to ask her what she knows and how she comes to know it.  It worked upon me awfully—­I mean what you told me.”  He made a visible effort to seem quieter than he was, and it showed me sufficiently that he had not been reassured.  I laid, to comfort him and smiling at a venture, a friendly hand on his arm, and he dropped into my eyes, fixing them an instant, a strange distended look which might have expressed the cold clearness of all that was to come.  “I know—­now!” he said with an emphasis he rarely used.

“What then did Mrs. Meldrum tell you?”

“Only one thing that signified, for she has no real knowledge.  But that one thing was everything.”

“What is it then?”

“Why, that she can’t bear the sight of her.”  His pronouns required some arranging, but after I had successfully dealt with them I replied that I was quite aware of Miss Saunt’s trick of turning her back on the good lady of Folkestone.  Only what did that prove?  “Have you never guessed?  I guessed as soon as she spoke!” Dawling towered over me in dismal triumph.  It was the first time in our acquaintance that, on any ground of understanding this had occurred; but even so remarkable an incident still left me sufficiently at sea to cause him to continue:  “Why, the effect of those spectacles!”