This extraordinary interview was now past.

Pleasure as well as pain attended my reflections on it.

I adhered to the promise I had improvidently given to Welbeck, but had excited displeasure, and perhaps suspicion, in the lady.

She would find it hard to account for my silence.

She would probably impute it to perverseness, or imagine it to flow from some incident connected with the death of Clavering, calculated to give a new edge to her curiosity.
It was plain that some connection subsisted between her and Welbeck.
Would she drop the subject at the point which it had now attained?
Would she cease to exert herself to extract from me the desired information, or would she not rather make Welbeck a party in the cause, and prejudice my new friend against me?
This was an evil proper, by all lawful means, to avoid.