As a matter of fact, she found very early in the evening, and continued to find thereafter, that the most engaging feature of Mr. Carrington's character was the interest he took in other people's business, so that the conversation very quickly strayed away from his own concerns—and remained away. It was not that he showed any undue curiosity; far from it. He was simply so sympathetic and such a good listener and put questions that showed he was following everything you said to him in a way that really very few people did. And, moreover, in spite of his engaging frankness, there was an indefinable air of discretion about him that made one feel safe to tell him practically everything. She herself told him the sad story of her brother in Australia (a tale which, as a rule, she told only to her special intimates) before he had been in her room half an hour.
But with the arrival of three or four choice spirits, the conversation became more general, and it was naturally not long before it turned on the greatest local sensation and mystery within the memory of man—the Cromarty murder. Mr. Carrington's surprise was extreme when he realised that he was actually in the county where the tragedy had occurred, within a very few miles of the actual spot, in fact. Of course, he had read about it in the papers, but only cursorily, it seemed, and he had no idea he was coming into the identical district that had acquired such a sinister notoriety.
