The corner of his mouth twitched briefly to the side. "Weighing costs is rarely an exact science." And people paid the price in lives quite frequently, not that that made things any better. He wouldn't want it to be him, after all - and there were several people he'd rather see thrown away than Vance, come to that, but one rarely got to choose. "I have a position to maintain, and it requires making sacrifices. I didn't set out to trouble you. I do regret it." He was never quite sure how to look like he regretted something, but he supposed that wouldn't have helped a great deal, anyway. In truth, he didn't know exactly what had befallen her. She looked well enough, but it had been quite a long time.