“Well, he didn’t like talebearing⁠—he hated complaints. He was terribly short with anything of that kind, and if people were all right to him ⁠—”

“He wouldn’t be bothered with more?” This squared well enough with my impressions of him: he was not a trouble-loving gentleman, nor so very particular perhaps about some of the company he kept. All the same, I pressed my interlocutress. “I promise you I would have told!”

She felt my discrimination. “I daresay I was wrong. But, really, I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of things that man could do. Quint was so clever⁠—he was so deep.”