“Yes, but how?”
“I can't prophesy how Grafton will go about it, but I know what I should do.”
Virginia's smile was irresistible, but there was a look in the deepest depth of the brown eyes that was sifting Mr. Arthur Jastrow to the innermost sand-heap of his desert nature.
“How would you do it, Mr. Napoleon Jastrow?” she asked, giving him the exact fillip on the side of gratified vanity.
“Oh, I'd fix him. He is in a frame of mind right now; and by the time the lawyers are through drilling him in the trespass affair, he'll be just spoiling for a row with somebody.”
“Do you think so? Oh, how delicious! And then what?”
“Then I'd hire some plug-ugly to stumble up against him and pick a quarrel with him. He'd do the rest—and land in the lock-up.”
Those who knew her best said it was a warning to be heeded in Miss Virginia Carteret when her eyes were downcast and her voice sank to its softest cadence.
“Why, certainly; how simple!” she said, taking her cousin's arm again; and the secretary went in to set the wires at work in Winton's affair.
Now Miss Carteret was a woman in every fiber of her, but among her gifts she might have counted some that were, to say the least, super-feminine. One of these was a measure of discretion which would have been fairly creditable in a past master of diplomacy. So, while the sympathetic part of her was crying out for a chance to talk Winton's threatened danger over with some one, she lent herself outwardly to the Reverend Billy's mood—which was one of scenic enthusiasm; this without prejudice to a growing determination to intervene in behalf of fair play for Winton if she could find a way.