- was no novelty. I had felt it at our first meeting in the private
hotel. His tact, his sympathy, his handsome face, his personal charm,
his frank friendliness, had one and all tempted me to bore this
complete stranger with unsolicited confidences for which an
inquisitive relative might have angled in vain. And the temptation
was the stronger because I knew in my heart that I should not bore
the young squire at all; that he was anxious enough to hear my story
from my own lips, but too good a gentleman intentionally to betray
such anxiety. Vanity was also in the impulse. A vulgar newspaper
prominence had been my final (and very genuine) tribulation; but to
please and to interest one so pleasing and so interesting to me,
was another and a subtler thing. And then there was his sympathy
- shall I add his admiration? - for my reward.

I do not pretend that I argued thus deliberately in my heated and
excited brain. I merely hold that all these small reasons and
motives were there, fused and exaggerated by the liquor which
was there as well. Nor can I say positively that Rattray put no
leading questions; only that I remember none which had that sound;
and that, once started, I am afraid I needed only too little
encouragement to run on and on.

Well, I was set going before we got up from the table. I continued
in an armchair that my host dragged from a little book-lined room
adjoining the hall. I finished on my legs, my back to the fire, my
hands beating wildly together. I had told my dear Rattray of my
own accord more than living man had extracted from me yet. He
interrupted me very little; never once until I came to the murderous
attack by Santos on the drunken steward.