"But I assure you that I have had a lot to do here.
When you came in just now I was about to get up and go to your house as usual." Guillaume kept his eyes on him for a moment longer.

Then, either believing him or deciding to postpone his search for the truth to some future time, he began speaking affectionately on other subjects.

With his keen brotherly love, however, there was blended such a quiver of impending distress, of unconfessed sorrow, which possibly he did not yet realise, that Pierre in his turn began to question him.

"And you," said he, "are you ill?
You seem to me to have lost your usual serenity." "I?
Oh! I'm not ill.

Only I can't very well retain my composure; Salvat's affair distresses me exceedingly, as you must know.