"I do. I should think you would. The trial was in all the papers. It was
the Gray estate. He was Mrs. Gray's trustee. He ruined the whole Gray
family."
"Possibly." He did his best to speak airily. "In the matter of estates
there are all sorts of hitches that can happen. Some are worse than
others, of course--"
"I've seen his wife, Ada Berrington, once or twice, when I've been in
Paris. She lives there, waiting for him to come out of Singville. She
avoids her old friends when she can--but I've seen her."
"I think I remember hearing about them," he said, for the sake of saying
something; "but--"
"I should like to go and talk with my father. Would you mind waiting?"
She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her way.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Miss Guion. If he's not well it'll
only upset him. Why not let everything be just as it is? You won't
regret it a year hence--believe me. In nine things out of ten you'd know
better than I; but this is the tenth thing, in which I know better than
you. Why not trust me--and let me have a free hand?"
"I'm afraid I must go to my father. If you'll be kind enough to wait,
I'll come back and tell you what he says. Then we shall know. Will you
please let me pass?"
He moved to one side. He thought again of the woman in the English
law-court. It was like this that she walked from the dock--erect,
unflinching, graceful, with eyes fixed straight before her, as though
she saw something in the air.
He watched her cross the hall to the foot of the staircase. There she
paused pensively. In a minute or two she came back to the sitting-room
door.
"If it should be like--like Jack Berrington," she said, from the
threshold, with a kind of concentrated quiet in her manner, "then--what
you suggested--would be more out of the question than ever."
"I don't see that," he returned, adopting her own tone. "I should think
it would be just the other way."
She shook her head.
"There are a lot of points of view that you haven't seen yet," he
persisted. "I could put some of them before you if you'd give me time."
"It would be no use doing that. I should never believe anything but that
we, my father and I, should bear the responsibilities of our own acts."
"You'll think differently," he began, "when you've looked at the thing
all round; and then--"
But before he could complete his sentence she had gone.
* * * * *
Having seen her go up-stairs, he waited in some uncertainty. When
fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and she did not return, he decided
to wait no longer. Picking up his hat and stick from the chair on which
he had laid them, he went out by the French window, making his way to
the gate across the lawn.