The next morning I started on my mission with renewed hopefulness. Reaching the Crawford house, I asked for Miss Lloyd, and I was shown into a small parlor to wait for her. It was a sort of morning room, a pretty little apartment that I had not been in before; and it was so much more cheerful and pleasant than the stately library, I couldn't help hoping that Miss Lloyd, too, would prove more amenable than she had yet been.
She soon came in, and though I was beginning to get accustomed to the fact that she was a creature of variable moods, I was unprepared for this one. Her hauteur had disappeared; she was apparently in a sweet and gentle frame of mind. Her large dark eyes were soft and gentle, and though her red lips quivered, it was not with anger or disdain as they had done the day before. She wore a plain white morning gown, and a long black necklace of small beads. The simplicity of this costume suited her well, and threw into relief her own rich coloring and striking beauty.
She greeted me more pleasantly than she had ever done before, and I couldn't help feeling that the cheerful sunny little room had a better effect on her moods than the darker furnishings of the library.
“I wish,” I began, “that we had not to talk of anything unpleasant this morning. I wish there were no such thing as untruth or crime in the world, and that I were calling on you, as an acquaintance, as a friend might call.”
“I wish so, too,” she responded, and as she flashed a glance at me, I had a glimpse of what it might mean to be friends with Florence Lloyd without the ugly shadow between us that now was spoiling our tete-a-tete.
Just that fleeting glance held in it the promise of all that was attractive, charming and delightful in femininity. It was as if the veil of the great, gloomy sorrow had been lifted for a moment, and she was again an untroubled, merry girl. It seemed too, as if she wished that we could be together under pleasanter circumstances and could converse on subjects of less dreadful import. However, all these thoughts that tumultuously raced through my mind must be thrust aside in favor of the business in hand.
So though I hated to, I began at once.
“I am sorry, Miss Lloyd, to doubt your word, but I want to tell you myself rather than to have you learn it from others that I have a witness who has testified to your presence in your uncle's office that fateful Tuesday night, although you have said you didn't go down there.”
As I had feared, the girl turned white and shivered as if with a dreadful apprehension.
“Who is the witness?” she said.