"
"Well--go on with your accounting then," I said, assuming an air of
resignation.
"That's just it." Marlow fell into his stride at once. "That's just it.
Mere disappointed cupidity cannot account for the proceedings of the next
morning; proceedings which I shall not describe to you--but which I shall
tell you of presently, not as a matter of conjecture but of actual fact.
Meantime returning to that evening altercation in deadened tones within
the private apartment of Miss de Barral's governess, what if I were to
tell you that disappointment had most likely made them touchy with each
other, but that perhaps the secret of his careless, railing behaviour,
was in the thought, springing up within him with an emphatic oath of
relief "Now there's nothing to prevent me from breaking away from that
old woman." And that the secret of her envenomed rage, not against this
miserable and attractive wretch, but against fate, accident and the whole
course of human life, concentrating its venom on de Barral and including
the innocent girl herself, was in the thought, in the fear crying within
her "Now I have nothing to hold him with .
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