Steventon, put on his honor, and fairly forced to say something, owned the truth.

Wardour had replaced an officer whom accident had disabled from accompanying the party of relief, and Wardour and Frank were missing together.
Clara looked at Mrs.Crayford.
"You hear ?" she said.

"It is you who are mistaken, not I.What you call 'Accident,' what I call 'Fate,' brought Richard Wardour and Frank together as members of the same Expedition, after all." Without waiting for a reply, she again turned to Steventon, and surprised him by changing the painful subject of the conversation of her own accord.
"Have you been in the Highlands of Scotland ?" she asked.
"I have never been in the Highlands," the lieutenant replied.
"Have you ever read, in books about the Highlands, of such a thing as 'The Second Sight' ?" "Yes." "Do you believe in the Second Sight ?" Steventon politely declined to commit himself to a direct reply.
"I don't know what I might have done, if I had ever been in the Highlands," he said.

"As it is, I have had no opportunities of giving the subject any serious consideration." "I won't put your credulity to the test," Clara proceeded.

"I won't ask you to believe anything more extraordinary than that I had a strange dream in England not very long since.