“Mr. Shippen!” she gasped, with no marks of pleasure in the look she gave him. It was strictly interrogative, unfeelingly so.
“Yes,” he returned hastily, interpreting her manner. “I came down to look after the sale of that mining property. Couldn’t resist dropping in on my way back to town this afternoon. Wanted to see you.”
She moved past him, sat down some distance beyond and fixed her wide blue gaze upon him.
He followed, not quite sure about sitting, feeling somehow that she might be going to keep him on his feet. Still he risked it and chose a chair politely removed from her immediate neighborhood, which was chilly, he could not tell whether or not from design.
“You wish to see me?” she asked after a pause.
The question disconcerted him. He flushed, recovered himself and showed his teeth in a handsome smile. “Yes, do you mind?” he retorted.
“But what do you want to see me about?” she insisted, as if this must be a matter of business, a painful business, since she knew that he was associated with her husband.
He snickered nervously, recovered his gravity at once, warned by the tightening of her lips. “When are you coming to New York?” he asked suddenly.
She drew back from this adder of a question. “Is this why you came—you were sent?” she barely breathed the words, laying a hand like a confession upon her breast.
“I was not sent,” he returned quickly. “You understand?”