The engineer purposefully prolonged the talk with Fitzpatrick until the scattered sight-seers had gathered for a descent, under Jerry Blacklock's lead, to the great ravine below the dam where the river thundered out of the cut-off tunnel. But when he saw that Miss Craigmiles had elected to stay behind, and that Wingfield had attached himself to the younger Miss Cantrell, he gave the contractor his information boiled down into a curt sentence or two, and hastened to join the stay-behind.
"You'll melt, out here in the sun," he said, overtaking her as she stood looking down into the whirling vortex made by the torrent's plunge into the entrance of the cut-off tunnel.
She ignored the care-taking phrase as if she had not heard it.
"Mr. Wingfield?—you have kept him from getting interested in the—in the——"
Ballard nodded.
"He is interested, beyond doubt. But for the present moment I have kept him from adding anything to Miss Dosia's artless gossip. Will you permit me to suggest that it was taking rather a long chance?—your bringing him down here?"
"I know; but I couldn't help it. Dosia would have brought him on your invitation. I did everything I could think of to obstruct; and when they had beaten me, I made a party affair of it. You'll have to forgive me for spoiling an entire working day for you."
"Since it has given me a chance to be with you, I'm only too happy in losing the day," he said; and he meant it. But he let her know the worst in the other matter in an added sentence. "I'm afraid the mischief is done in Wingfield's affair, in spite of everything."
"How?" she asked, and the keen anxiety in the grey eyes cut him to the heart.
He told her briefly of the chance arousing of Wingfield's curiosity, and of the playwright's expressed determination to fathom the mystery of the table-smashing stone. Her dismay was pathetic.