The sick man lifted his heavy eyebrows and smoothed his mustache. "Then proceed, by all means," he said. "One thing I have in tragic abundance is time; and I am flattered."
"There is a man at our Inn," began Diana, her fingers tightly intertwined in her lap, "who has a young boy in his power. The lad is his nephew. He shows every sign of years of neglect. The uncle continually betrays himself, and scarcely tries to hide the fact that he is looking forward to incarcerating the boy in some institution for the deranged."
"Simply to get rid of him?"
"No; there is money back in the family somewhere, and we—I have come to the conviction that this man believes the boy will fall heir to it, and that, if he is safely out of the way, the uncle as guardian will get control of this money."
"What sort of mentality does the boy seem to have?"
"He is a sensitive, fine-grained lad with just the sort of nature which persistent brutality will blight and paralyze. He has been so neglected that he has little physical resistance and one can see him being gradually crushed with as little hope of escape as the fly in the spider's web."
"And you take it greatly to heart, eh?" said the invalid, regarding the girl's flushed face and appealing eyes.
"Wouldn't any one?" she asked.
"A confounded nuisance to have such a circumstance mar your vacation."