‘Do you know how I learnt where you were?’

She looked up for an instant.

‘I have a suspicion.  You went to Twybridge?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not in your own name?’

‘I can hardly tell why not.’

Peak laughed.  He was physically and mentally at rest in comparison with his state for the past few days.  Things had a simpler aspect all at once.  After all, who would wish to interfere maliciously with him?  Women like to be in secrets, and probably Marcella would preserve his.

‘What conjectures had you made about me?’ he asked, with an air of amusement.

’Many, of course.  But I heard something not long ago which seemed so unlikely, yet was told so confidently, that at last I couldn’t overcome my wish to make inquiries.’

‘And what was that?’

’Mr. Malkin has been to America, and he declared that he had met you in the streets of Boston—­and that you refused to admit you were yourself.’

Peak laughed still more buoyantly.  His mood was eager to seize on any point that afforded subject for jest.

’Malkin seems to have come across my Doppelganger.  One mustn’t pretend to certainty in anything, but I am disposed to think I never was in Boston.’

‘He was of course mistaken.’

Marcella’s voice had an indistinctness very unlike her ordinary tone.  As a rule she spoke with that clearness and decision which corresponds to qualities of mind not commonly found in women.  But confidence seemed to have utterly deserted her; she had lost her individuality, and was weakly feminine.

‘I have been here since last Christmas,’ said Godwin, after a pause.

‘Yes.  I know.’

Their eyes met.

‘No doubt your friends have told you as much as they know of me?’

‘Yes—­they have spoken of you.’

‘And what does it amount to?’

He regarded her steadily, with a smile of indifference.

’They say’—­she gazed at him as if constrained to do so—­’that you are going into the Church.’  And as soon as she uttered the last word, a painful laugh escaped her.

‘Nothing else?  No comments?’

‘I think Miss Moorhouse finds it difficult to understand.’

‘Miss Moorhouse?’ He reflected, still smiling.  ’I shouldn’t wonder.  She has a sceptical mind, and she doesn’t know me well enough to understand me.’

‘Doesn’t know you well enough?’

She repeated the words mechanically.  Peak gave her a keen glance.

‘Has she led you to suppose,’ he asked, ’that we are on intimate terms?’

‘No.’  The word fell from her, absently, despondently.

’Miss Moxey, would anything be gained by our discussing my position?  If you think it a mystery, hadn’t we better leave it so?’

She made no answer.

‘But perhaps,’ he went on, ’you have told them—­the Walworths and the Moorhouses—­that I owe my friends an explanation?  When I see them again, perhaps I shall be confronted with cold, questioning faces?’