“No, my dear girl; it can be done so much easier than that. Her mother and her younger sister are still at Driftwood, their summer place in Mamaroneck. At four o’clock this afternoon they sent into the city a certain Miss Annie Seabrooke. She is a St. Luke’s graduate, a professional nurse who has been looking after old Mrs. Van Schaick. This lady, apparently, is a good deal of a hypochondriac. The nurse, of course, has to get things ready for her patient’s return. I have already met Miss Seabrooke at the Grand Central Station. I have also, at Miss Lydia’s urgent request, installed her at the Holland House, over night. This, by the way, is the lady’s bag. I tried to explain to her that the whole Van Schaick house wants to be given over to Miss Lydia’s coming-of-age function.”
Frances, already carried down again by her tidal reaction of feeling, watched him through narrowed and abstracted eyes.
“In this bag, among other things, you’ll find a nurse’s uniform,” Durkin went on hurriedly, oblivious of her scrutiny. “It will fit a little loose, I’m afraid—Miss Seabrooke is a big, wide-shouldered Canadian girl. And in forty or fifty minutes from now you ought to be inside that uniform and inside the Van Schaick house—if we ever want to carry this thing through!”
“And then—?” she asked, in her dead and impersonal voice, as though her thoughts were leagues away.
“Then,” cried Durkin, “then you’ve got to get hold of a glove-box in Miss Lydia Van Schaick’s chiffonier drawer. By some means or other we’ve got to get hold of that box, and—”
She stopped him, by holding up a sudden silencing hand. Her face was white and set; he could see none of the iris of her eyes.
“It’s no use!” she said, evenly and quietly. “It’s no use. I can not and will not do it!”
Durkin fell back from her, aghast. Then he took her by the arm, and turned her about so that the light fell on her face. He could see that her lower lip was trembling.
“You back down—now?” he demanded, with a touch of incredulity.
“Yes, I back down!” she answered, letting her eyes meet his.