He swung away, singing a canzonet, and quickly vanished, while Brendon, overwhelmed by this extraordinary conversation, sat for an hour motionless and deep in thought. He could hardly plough his path through what appeared a jungle of flagrant falsehood. But where another man had striven to find underlying purpose in this diatribe and consider Doria's object in choosing him for a confessor, Brendon, while swift enough to regard the attack on Jenny as foul and false, yet did not hesitate to believe that which his own desire drove him to believe. He sifted the grain from the chaff, doubtfully guided by his own passion, and saw the Italian's wife free. But he could not see her false. He scorned the baleful picture that Giuseppe had painted and guessed that his purpose was to cut the ground from under Jenny's feet and accuse her of those identical crimes that he himself had committed. His attitude to Doria was affirmed, and from that hour he believed, with Peter Ganns, that the Italian knew the purposes of the unknown and was assisting him to achieve them. But again his spirit picked and chose. He did not remember how Ganns also, though in more temperate words than Doria's, had warned him for the present to put no trust even in Jenny. He trusted her as he trusted himself; and that also meant distrusting her husband.
He considered now his own course of action and presently proceeded to the region in which Robert Redmayne had been most frequently reported. Certain appearances were chronicled and, before Ganns returned to England, the theory had been accepted that the fugitive hid and dwelt aloft in some fastness with the charcoal burners. Now Brendon felt the need to probe this opinion and determined, if possible, to find the lair of the red man.
Not single-handed did he expect to do so. His purpose henceforth was to watch Doria unseen and so discover whom he served. Thus he would kill two birds with one stone and simplify action for Peter Ganns when he returned.
Brendon climbed steadily upward and presently sat down to rest upon a little, lofty plateau where, in the mountain scrub, grew lilies of the valley and white sun-rose. Idly he sat and smoked, marked the steamers creep, like waterman beetles, upon the shiny surface of the lake stretched far below, watched a brown fox sunning itself on a stone and then plucked a bunch of the fragrant valley lilies to take to Jenny that night when he came to sup at the Villa Pianezzo. But the blossoms never reached the hand of Mrs. Doria.