"But is there anything against Basil? Did he commit any crime? Did he wrong any one? This young man is ill-bred, but he is evidently sincere in his admiration. What is there to fear? What can be found out?"
Mrs. Lister answered hesitatingly, choosing her words.
"He did not get on with my father. He—he went away. He was always strange—we loved him dearly. I—oh, Thomas, he went away in anger and we couldn't find him; we never saw him or heard of him till he was dead. No one knew that he was alienated from us. I cannot endure it that any one should know!"
Then Richard came up on the porch.
"Little Cora might have amounted to something with another mother," said he. "Who is this man Utterly? He sat there beside Miss Thomasina and rattled like a dry gourd full of seeds. What is his business here?"
Dr. Lister remembered that Richard had been out of the room when Utterly had said his say about Basil Everman. Mrs. Lister found in his absence one cause for thankfulness. She answered with an evasion and the three went into the house.
CHAPTER X "MY BROTHER BASIL WAS DIFFERENT!"
In the morning Utterly sought Thomasina early. He looked about her beautiful room and out into the quiet garden and his hopes rose. Here was atmosphere! If he had only seen Miss Davis first, he might have saved a great deal of time. He had accounted to himself for her sudden silence the evening before. Mrs. Lister was within hearing and her morbid attitude toward the memory of her brother was doubtless known to her friends. He had brought with him the copies of "Willard's Magazine" and had laid them on the table beside him.