He fixed me with a kind of cruel joyousness. “You will—you will,” he assured me; “at least you’ll begin to, when you hear that I’ve seen Miss Copt.”
“Miss Copt?”
“And that she has told me under what conditions the picture was bought.”
“She doesn’t know anything about the conditions! That is,” I added, hastening to restrict the assertion, “she doesn’t know my opinion of the picture.” I thirsted for five minutes with Eleanor.
“Are you quite sure?” Crozier took me up. “Mr. Jefferson Rose does.”
“Ah—I see.”
“I thought you would,” he reminded me. “As soon as I’d laid eyes on the Rembrandt—I beg your pardon!—I saw that it—well, required some explanation.”
“You might have come to me.”
“I meant to; but I happened to meet Miss Copt, whose encyclopædic information has often before been of service to me. I always go to Miss Copt when I want to look up anything; and I found she knew all about the Rembrandt.”
“All?”