"Perhaps," said the girl, a little bitterly, remembering his earlier remarks, "I have to protect society from you." The lawyer winced; his hand quickly relinquished hers and dropped to his side.
"You mean?" he said quickly; the man took a step forward, staring into her face—"I wonder what you do mean."
"Good-night," said Sard, her voice quivered a little, but she made the effort to be businesslike, "you will let me know what you can in connection with the case, with Terence," then a sudden little impulsive softening, "I do thank you. I know that you have been kind and patient with us." She motioned to the solemn-eyed one waiting at a little distance for her. "I must hurry. Good-night!"
They shook hands again, this time a something of liking between them, and Shipman watched the girl step confidently out of his wondering observation.
Car after car curved away down the steep road, young voice after young voice died on the midnight mountain echoes, but until very late indeed a man stood looking out upon the moonlit Hudson, and it seemed to Watts Shipman that the whole mountain said, that all the trees and rocks and stars and ripples said to each other one significant word and that word was "Youth."
CHAPTER XII
THE MAN ON THE PLACE
"Will you do something for me?" Sard had asked Minga on the day of her friend's arrival. Later she had made the request that Minga lead up to the subject of Terence O'Brien; only because she had lost the courage to speak of the thing that those days was continually in her mind; namely, the mystery of the new man Colter. He, who busied himself quietly all day about the drives and shrubberies and caring for the cars, and who, at night, she saw strolling around to the garden seat to listen to the music of the Judge's pet records. But now, after a comradeship of two weeks, much of Sard's restraint had vanished, so that as the two girls glided in the little roadster out of Bogart's drive one morning and Minga asked curiously, "What was that thing, Sardy, that you were going to tell me?" her friend's answering laugh was less conscious than it might have been.