“No, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Rosscott frankly. “I expected to see someone else—someone that I knew. Nearly all my visitors are people whom I know.”
Her eyes rather demanded an observance of the conventionalities while her words were putting the best face possible on the queer five minutes. The stranger smiled.
“My name is Clover,” he said then. “Of course, as you never saw me before, you want to know that first of all.”
“I’d choose to know,” she said. And then the uncompromising neutrality of her expression deepened so plainly that he hastened to add:
“I’m H. Wyncoop Clover.”
“Oh!” she said. And then smiled, too; having heard the name before.
“Why don’t you ask me my business?” went on H. Wyncoop Clover. “I must have come for some reason, you know.”
“I didn’t know it,” said Mrs. Rosscott—“I don’t know anything about you yet.”
They both smiled—and then H. Wyncoop resumed his colorless sobriety at once.
“It’s about Jack,” he said—“these terrible new developments—” he stopped short, seeing his vis-à-vis turn deathly white, “it’s nothing to be frightened over,” he said reassuringly.