"Tell me, why can't you tell me, why you disappeared?" demanded the
Marquess. "Surely you owe it to me!"
"No, I have buried the past," said Mr. Clendon. "Let it lie. But I will
tell you why I have forced myself to come to you--yes, forced myself,
Talbot, for I knew that it was better that I should remain as one dead."
"Yes, tell me," said the Marquess, with feverish eagerness. "If there is
anything I can do, if you have decided to stick to your resolution, if
there is nothing I can say that will persuade you to come forward----"
"There is nothing," Mr. Clendon assured him calmly.
The Marquess sighed heavily. "Then you must let me--how shall I put
it?--provide for you, take care of your future. You must want money. Oh,
it's absurd; it drives me mad! To think that nearly every penny I
possess is yours. But tell me what I'm to do, Wilfred."
"Nothing for me--that is directly," said Mr. Clendon. "Don't say any
more about myself. I am touched by your generosity--yes, generosity,
Talbot; for I feel that you have every reason, every right, to turn upon
me and upbraid me for presenting myself after all this time, for
harrowing you with the knowledge of my existence. You can do nothing for
me in the way of money. I have all I need. I have grown so used to the
poverty of my surroundings that, if I were raised out of them I should
feel like the prisoner released from the Bastille, and weep for my cell
and the prison rations. But you can do something for someone in whom I
am interested."
The Marquess looked up, with something like a gleam of apprehension.
"Someone belonging to you? Your son--daughter?"
Mr. Clendon was silent for a moment, then he said: "No, I have no son or
daughter. I am childless. The person of whom I speak is a young girl, no
relation of mine, scarcely a friend, save for the fact that I have been
of service to her, and that she regards me as the only friend she has.
We live in the same block of buildings--have met as ships pass in the
night. She is a poor girl who has been working as a kind of secretary,
but her employer has died suddenly, and she is now penniless and
helpless."
The Marquess started to his feet and paced the room again.
"I feel as if I were in a dream, a nightmare," he said. "Here are you,
suddenly springing to life, poor, almost destitute, and you come to me,
not asking for all that is yours by right, not even for money for
yourself, but for someone, for some girl who is not even of your kith
and kin, has no claim on you. I always thought you mad, Wilfred, in the
old days when we were boys together. I still think you're mad. How could
I think otherwise?"