"And the others?" he queried.
"They have just left; gone on ahead in the touring-car. I was deputed to bring you."
"But I told you this morning that I couldn't go, and I can't!" he protested.
She looked him squarely in the eye. "Evan, you don't dare tell me why you can't!"
"Business," he pleaded.
"That may be half of the truth, but it isn't any more than half." Then she made the direct appeal: "I wish you'd tell me, Evan. I know a little—just the little that Mrs. Blount has seen fit to tell me—and no more. There is trouble threatening; some dreadful trouble. I saw it yesterday when you were so miserable; I can see it in your eyes this minute."
Blount got up and began to pace the floor so that she might not see his eyes. He was no more proof against such an appeal than any lover gladly ready to bare his soul to the woman chosen out of a world of women for his confidant and second self would be.
"I want to tell you," he affirmed, wheeling abruptly to face her; "I wanted to tell you yesterday, only it was too horrible. You will know it all when I say that by this time to-morrow the whole State will be ringing with the story of David Blount's degradation and ruin; and I—his only son, Patricia—I shall be the one who will have betrayed him and brought it to pass!"
She blanched a little at that, and there was a great horror in her eyes. But he noted at the moment, and remembered it afterward, that she did not push him into the harrowing details, as another woman might have done.
"You are very sure, I suppose?" she said gently.