I understood, now, his solicitude for Miss Holladay--"in her I take
such an interest!" It was important that he should know the moment we
discovered her absence. And he had known; he knew that I was even at
this moment commencing the search for her. My cheeks reddened at the
thought of my indiscreetness; yet he was a man to command confidence.
Who would have suspected him? And an old proverb which he had repeated
one evening, flashed through my mind:
"Folle est la brebis qui au loup se confesse."
"Silly is the sheep who to the wolf herself confesses," I had
translated it, with that painful literalness characteristic of the
beginner. Well, I had been the sheep, and silly enough, Heaven knows!
I had reached Broadway, and at the corner I paused to look at a
display of men's furnishings in a window. Far down the street, on the
other side, almost lost in the hurrying crowd, Martigny was buying a
paper of a newsboy. He shook it out and looked quickly up and down its
columns, like a man who is searching for some special item of news.
Perhaps he _was_ a speculator; perhaps, after all, I was deceiving
myself in imagining that he was following me. I had no proof of it; it
was the most natural thing in the world that he should be in this part
of the town. I must test the theory before accepting it.
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