"Have YOU come upon some
clew? Have YOU heard something which I have not?"
The smile with which he seasoned his reply was of a very different
nature from that which he had previously bestowed upon her. It
prepared her, possibly, for the shock of his words:
"I hardly think so," said he. "If I do not mistake, we have been
the recipients of the same communications."
She started to her feet, but sat again instantly. "Pray explain
yourself," she urged. "Who has been writing to you? And what have
they written?" she added, presuming a little upon her fascinations
as a woman to win an honest response.
"Must I speak first?"
If it was a tilt, it was between even forces.
"It would be gentlemanly in you to do so."
"But I am not of a gentlemanly temper."
"I deal with no other," said she; but with what a glance and in
what a tone!
A man may hold out long--and if a lawyer and a bachelor more than
long, but there is a point at which he succumbs. Mr. Black had
reached that point. Smoothing his brow and allowing a more kindly
expression to creep into his regard, he took two or three crushed
and folded papers from a drawer beside him and, holding them, none
too plainly in sight, remarked very quietly, but with legal
firmness:
"Do not let us play about the bush any longer. You have announced
your intention of making no further attempt to discover the man
who in your eyes merited the doom accorded to John Scoville. Your
only reason for this--if you are the woman I think you--lies in
your fear of giving further opportunity to the misguided rancour
of an irresponsible writer of anonymous epistles.
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