Page:Anstey--Tourmalin's time cheques.djvu/136

132 and seeing a girl reading on deck, I took a chair near her, and after a few introductory remarks I mentioned your name. The effect upon her was such as to convince me that she felt more than an ordinary interest in you. By degrees I drew from her the whole story of her relations with you: she even asked me—me—for advice!"

So Miss Davenport's confidante had not been Miss Tyrrell after all—but Sophia! If he had only known that before!

"I could not speak to her," continued Sophia, "I felt stifled, stupefied by what I had heard! I could bear no more; and so I rose and left her, and walked down some stairs, and somehow found myself back in our own room again! I was more bewildered than ever. I looked for the cheque, but there was nothing, and soon I was forced to believe that the whole thing was imaginary. Still, I was not wholly satisfied. You may remember how I questioned you one evening when you were reading the Doll's House to me; well, your answers quite reassured me for the time. I told myself that my suspicions were too wildly improbable not to have been a delusion.