“Oh, I will—I do—but—I can’t.”
“Then you needn’t—and, don’t look so distressed, my poor little girl. Tell me only what you want to—just let me help in any way that you want me to. And, Phyllis—I hate to make this proposition, but I must. If anything happens—if anything is said that frightens you, or troubles you deeply—will you—if you feel it would help you in any way—will you say that you are engaged to me?”
“When I’m not!”
“You may consider that you are or not, as you wish; but I have an idea that occasion might arise, when it would help you to announce the engagement—to assert that you have some one to look after you. If you want to break it later—that is, of course, your privilege.”
“Oh,” said Phyllis, looking at him, admiringly, “how good you are! Nobody else would have thought of that!”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I want you—I want you to say yes to me for keeps, some day. But in the meantime, if it ever should serve your purpose, claim me as your fiance.”
CHAPTER XIV—Hester’s Statement
Pollard and Lane, sitting talking in the Club Lounge, were joined by Dean Monroe.
“It’s a queer thing,” Monroe said, “that nobody gets any forrader in the Gleason matter. What are police for? What are detectives for? And most of all, what are we chaps for, if we can’t solve a mystery right in our own set?”
“I don’t know that it matters, being in our own set,” Pollard began, but Monroe interrupted: