A change passed over Miss Dare. She dropped her eyes, and an instant's pause followed this last acknowledgment.
"Will you tell me," she inquired, at last, speaking very slowly, in an attempt to infuse into her voice no more than a natural tone of interest, "how it was he came to say he stood in that place during the assault?"
"He did not say he stood in that place during the assault," was again the forced rejoinder of Mr. Byrd. "It was by means of a nice calculation of time and events, that it was found he must have been in the house at or near the fatal moment."
Another pause; another bar of that lovely music.
"And he is a gentleman, you say?" was her hurried remark at last.
"Yes, and a very handsome one."
"And they have put him in prison?"
"Yes, or will on the morrow."
She turned and leaned against a window-frame near by, looking with eyes that saw nothing into the still vast night.
"I suppose he has friends," she faintly suggested.