“What had you thought of?”
“I can’t think—I’m too foolishly rattled to think; and that is why I sent for you. You can plan all around the rest of us. What do you say?”
Dorothy sat back in the great chair and thought it all out in the turning of a leaf.
“Mr. Brant must be made to listen to reason,” she said decisively. “He must let papa defend him; he must let papa use these papers; and he must tell us all the things we don’t know.”
Antrim’s gesture was of despair. “Pity’s sake! that is just what we have all been trying to get him to do for two whole weeks!”
“I can’t help it; that is what must be done.”
“And done it shall be, if you will only go a step farther and tell me how we are to bring it about.”
“Can’t you persuade him?”
“Persuade nothing! Why, Dorothy, you haven’t an idea what a mule the man is! Your father, and Forsyth, and Colonel Bowran, and I have fairly worn ourselves out trying to make him open his head. There isn’t a thing any of us could think of that hasn’t been tried; not a— Yes, by Jove, there is one thing, too!”
An inspiration much too large to be readily clothed in words came to Antrim, dazzling him with its invincible simplicity. Dorothy divined it with quick intuition, and her heart sank within her at the bare suggestion.