"They used to tell it us when we were children," said my host, in
a hoarse voice, "and to frighten my cousin--I mean my wife--and me with
stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope may die out,
as I sincerely pray to heaven that it may be false." "Alice--Mrs. Oke--you
see," he went on after some time, "doesn't feel about it as I do. Perhaps I
am morbid. But I do dislike having the old story raked up."
And we said no more on the subject.
4
From that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of Mrs.
Oke; or rather, I began to perceive that I had a means of securing her
attention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often reproached
myself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to guess that I
was making mischief merely by chiming in, for the sake of the portrait I
had undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological mania, with what was
merely the fad, the little romantic affectation or eccentricity, of a
scatter-brained and eccentric young woman? How in the world should I have
dreamed that I was handling explosive substances? A man is surely not
responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals
with as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all other
human creatures.
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