"Oh!" She assumed the attitude of an inquisitor immediately. "Perhaps it was he who sent you here to-day?"
"No."
She looked long and scrutinizingly in his face, suspicious in her turn. "Then what made you come?"
Max paused a moment, and then evaded her question very neatly.
"What made me come in here? Why, I came by the invitation of a young lady, who told me she was afraid to go in alone."
The girl drew back a little.
"Yes, so I did. And I am very much obliged to you. I—I wanted to ask you to go into that room, the front room, and to fetch some things of mine—things I have left there. I daren't go in by myself."
Max hesitated. Beside his old suspicions, a new one had just started into his mind.
"Did you," he asked, suddenly, "know of some letters which were written to Mr. Dudley Horne?"
A change came over the girl's face; the expression of deadly terror which he had first seen upon it seemed to be returning gradually. The blue eyes seemed to grow wider, the lines in her cheek and mouth to become deeper. After a short pause, during which he noticed that her breath was coming in labored gasps, she whispered: