“May I not come? Don’t you want to see me again?”
“Oh, yes. But——”
“I don’t frighten you, do I, with my rough, uncivilised ways?”
“Oh, no; Oh, no. Frighten me! Of course not.”
“Then, if I don’t frighten you, why did you screw yourself up into a corner of the window-seat just now, to be as far from me as possible?”
He spoke in a low tone, bending towards her.
Freda blushed, but she never thought of denying the accusation. But what had her reason been? She herself did not know.
“I—I think it must have been because I had been crying, and of course nobody likes to be seen crying,” she answered slowly, hoping that she had told the truth.
“Crying, had you? What about? Tell me just this: is it about—Blewitt’s—death?”
“Why, why, do you know anything about that?”