"Ah," he says, and sighs a bit. "It was my hope that he would understand me to be after the stone myself, and that you," he puts down his own tea, gathers his hands quietly in his lap, "would hear that I was scarcely speaking of the stone at all."
"So it seems," he answers both. "I didn't know what happened until I was told--then I remembered something of it."
"How, then, did you escape?" he demands, leaning forward.