“Don’t be silly,” put in Miss Bascom. “That’s the last thing to say of her! Whatever that girl may be she’s got all her wits about her! I can see that for myself.”
“Was Doctor Waring present when Miss Austin was here?” asked Cray, thinking hard.
“Yes,” replied Mrs. Peyton, “and that’s a strange thing. When he first saw her—unexpectedly, you know—he dropped his teacup.”
“Because of the meeting?” asked Cray.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Peyton said. “He declared afterward he had never seen the girl before—but—oh—I can’t believe she came back here that night!”
“Of course she didn’t,” Cray said. “How could she get in, unless someone admitted her.”
“There’s the French window in the study,” Mrs. Peyton suggested, uncertainly. “Doctor Waring could have let her in that way—”
“Well, he didn’t!” Miss Bascom declared. “Land! I’ve known John Waring all my life, and he’s not the kind of man that had anything to do with flirtatious young women.”
Of a truth, Liza Bascom had known Waring for many years and had spent a number of them in desperate efforts to persuade him to renounce bachelorhood in her favor.
Yet her words carried little weight with Attorney Cray, who fancied that he knew men better than the insistent spinster possibly could.