"
Mr. Black said nothing; he was feeling a trifle cheap;--something
which did not agree with his crusty nature. Not having seen Mrs.
Scoville for a half-hour without her veil, her influence over him
was on the wane, and he began to regret that he had laid himself
open to this humiliation.
She saw that it would be left for her to wind up the interview and
get out of the place without arousing too much attention. With a
self-possession which astonished both men, knowing her immense
interest in this matter, she laid down the stick, and, with a
gentle shrug of her shoulders, remarked in an easy tone:
"Well, it's curious! The inns and outs of a crime, I mean. Such a
discovery ten years after the event (I think you said ten years)
is very interesting." Then she sighed: "Alas! it's too late to
benefit the one whose life it might have saved. Mr. Black, shall
we be going? I have spent a most entertaining quarter of an hour."
Mr. Black glanced from her to the sergeant before he joined her.
Then, with one of his sour smiles directed towards the former, he
said:
"I wouldn't be talking about this, sergeant. It will do no good,
and may subject us to ridicule."
The sergeant, none too well pleased, nodded slightly. Seeing
which, she spoke up:
"I don't know about that, I should think it but proper reparation
to the dead to let it be known that his own story of innocence has
received this late confirmation."
But the lawyer continued to shake his head, with a very sharp look
at the sergeant.
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