For the first time she saw Clara startled. Her lips parted, and the breath that came and went between them was audible. But she was herself again before she spoke. "Do with it? Why I don't know." Her fingers drummed the table.
"Whatever you do," Flora began, "please, oh, please don't do anything immediately."
Clara's eyebrows rose like graceful swallows. "You seem to anticipate pretty clearly what I am going to do."
"I suppose you're going to do what any one would who had a clue, and could bring a person to justice," Flora candidly responded. "But if ever I have made anything easy for you, Clara, won't you this time make it easy for me? I'm not asking you to give up the picture, I'm only asking you to wait."
Clara nodded toward the window, through which Kerr could still be seen with Mrs. Herrick. "On account of him?"
"On account of him."
For the first time Clara smiled. It crept out upon her face, as it were involuntarily, but she sat there smiling in contemplation for quite ten seconds. At last, "You want me to suppress my information? My dear Flora, don't you think you want me to do more than is honest?"
"Honest!" Flora cried. The words sounded hideous to her on Clara's tongue; and yet what right had she, she thought with shame, to judge of Clara's honesty when she herself was leagued with a thief? "Clara," she said humbly, before this upholder of the right, "I can't pretend I'm not suppressing things. I've only asked you to see me before you do anything more. Now, you've come. Will you tell me one thing—did you bring the picture with you?"
Clara weighed it. "Well, if I did—"
This was the considering Clara, and Flora realized whatever she could expect from her she couldn't expect mercy. It was another thing she must appeal to.