"Yes, Mademoiselle," Hanaud asked smoothly.
"It was an important letter," Ann went on again, choosing her words warily, much as yesterday at one moment in her interrogatory Betty herself had done—concealing something, too, just as Betty had done. "I had promised faithfully to write it. But the address was downstairs in Betty's room. It was the address of a doctor," and having said that, it seemed that she had cleared her obstacle, for she went on in a more easy and natural tone.
"You know what it is, Monsieur Hanaud. I had been playing tennis all the afternoon. I was pleasantly tired. There was a letter to be written with a good deal of care and the address was all the way downstairs. I said to myself that I would think out the terms of my letter first."
And here Jim Frobisher, who had been shifting impatiently from one foot to the other, broke in upon the narrative.
"But what was this letter about and to what doctor?" he asked.
Hanaud swung round almost angrily.
"Oh, please!" he cried. "These things will all come to light of themselves in their due order, if we leave them alone and keep them in our memories. Let Mademoiselle tell her story in her own way," and he was back at Ann Upcott again in a flash.
"Yes, Mademoiselle. You determined to think out the tenor of your letter."
A hint of a smile glimmered upon the girl's face for a second. "But it was an excuse really, an excuse to sit down in my big arm-chair, stretch out my legs and do nothing at all. You can guess what happened."
Hanaud smiled and nodded.