Vereker."

He looked at me like a dim phrenological bust. "The information----?"

"Vereker's secret, my dear man--the general intention of his books: the
string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the
carpet."

He began to flush--the numbers on his bumps to come out. "Vereker's
books had a general intention?"

I stared in my turn. "You don't mean to say you don't know it?" I
thought for a moment he was playing with me. "Mrs. Deane knew it; she
had it, as I say, straight from Corvick, who had, after infinite search
and to Vereker's own delight, found the very mouth of the cave. Where
_is_ the mouth? He told after their marriage--and told alone--the person
who, when the circumstances were reproduced, must have told you. Have
I been wrong in taking for granted that she admitted you, as one of the
highest privileges of the relation in which you stood to her, to the
knowledge of which she was after Corvick's death the sole depositary?
All _I_ know is that that knowledge is infinitely precious, and what I
want you to understand is that if you will in your turn admit _me_ to it
you will do me a kindness for which I shall be everlastingly grateful."

He had turned at last very red; I daresay he had begun by thinking I had
lost my wits. Little by little he followed me; on my own side I stared
with a livelier surprise. "I don't know what you're talking about," he
said.

He wasn't acting--it was the absurd truth. "She _didn't_ tell you-----"

"Nothing about Hugh Vereker."

I was stupefied; the room went round. It had been too good even for
that! "Upon your honour?"

"Upon my honour. What the devil's the matter with you?" he demanded.

"I'm astounded--I'm disappointed. I wanted to get it out of you."

"It isn't _in_ me!" he awkwardly laughed. "And even if it were----"

"If it were you'd let me have it--oh yes, in common humanity. But I
believe you. I see--I see!" I went on, conscious, with the full turn
of the wheel, of my great delusion, my false view of the poor man's
attitude. What I saw, though I couldn't say it, was that his wife hadn't
thought him worth enlightening. This struck me as strange for a woman
who had thought him worth marrying. At last I explained it by the
reflection that she couldn't possibly have married him for his
understanding. She had married him for something else. He was to
some extent enlightened now, but he was even more astonished, more
disconcerted: he took a mo