Converse felt the little hand tremble on his arm. The girl's eyelids all at once drooped wearily, but she pressed her other hand lightly across them, as if to brush away an obstructing veil.
"At that instant," she went on immediately, "I noticed that Mr. Nettleton's door was ajar. It was but a step to its shelter, and without thinking twice, I ran to it and—and—"
She faltered with an air of having forgotten what she would say. The others were hanging upon her words in a silence that was almost painful: Mountjoy intensely eager; the officer once more impassive; while Mrs. Westbrook had risen and approached a step or two nearer her daughter, whom she stood watching strangely, as if puzzled by something beyond and behind her words.
"You ran to the door—" suggested Converse; again the girl tried to brush away the persistent intervening veil.
"I feel so queerly," she said; "everything is whirling around so."
"You have been tried beyond your strength," interposed the lawyer; "perhaps we had better postpone—"
"No, no, no!" She checked him with sudden vehemence. "I must go on—I must. If I don't tell now, I never may. Where was I?" The lovely eyes glowed unnaturally bright; unconsciously she lifted her hand and struck the officer's arm with feverish impatience.
"You hurried to Mr. Nettleton's—"
"Yes—I pushed open the door and got behind it. My sole idea then was to escape a meeting with that man. I didn't close it entirely. I wheeled about and peeped down the hall, realizing that I was none too soon; for, sure enough, Señor de Sanchez was coming toward my brother's office.
"I watched him with a sort of fascination, and for the first time I experienced a strange, shrinking dread of the man—a fear I had never known before. For the first time I seemed to be looking at the man himself,—not at a handsome animated mask,—and what I saw made me shudder."