"Oh, you shouldn't----"
"Yes, I should. Mavis is under the impression that all girls are brought up in conventual seclusion, and are not allowed to see young men. Rebb, for obvious reasons, told her so. But she understands that she is to be taken into the world when she is one and twenty. Her twenty-first birthday is only ten months distant--nine months, in fact. When that time arrives she will want to come out. If Rebb lets her out she will probably be asked in marriage, and then he would----"
"Murder her," finished Macandrew. "Not at all. Rebb is too clever a man to place his precious neck in a noose. When her birthday came, and she turned restive, he would simply have called in a doctor to pronounce her insane and unfit for marriage."
"No doctor would dare to say that: Mavis is quite sane."
"Much can be done with money," said Tod dryly, "and Rebb has six thousand a year at his command. Besides, even if he could find no doctor to swear to her insanity, the mere rumor of such a thing would prevent any man from marrying her."
"I am not so certain of that," said Gerald grimly. "As you said just now, much can be done with money. However, Rebb won't have a chance of working out his rascally plot, whether he means murder or not. I shall go to Devonshire and interview him, and----"
"How do you know that he is there?" questioned Tod quickly.
The question recalled Haskins to a sense of his folly in trusting the widow with his secret. "I have made a fool of myself Macandrew," he remarked soberly, and resumed his seat, "it is my belief that Mrs. Crosbie has put Rebb on his guard, and that Rebb has gone down to Denleigh to thwart my plans for carrying off Mavis."
"Mrs. Crosbie! Jerry, I warned you."
"I know that, and I wish I had taken your warning. Listen!" And Gerald related his interview with the widow, ending with an emphatic declaration that he did not believe she had kept her promise of secrecy.