"I don't know your reasons: I can only fear them."
"If you could put the fear into words, perhaps I might be able to allay it," he returned gently.
"It is past alleviation; you know it. Mr. Wingfield was with you again to-day, and when he came home I knew that the thing I had been dreading had come to pass."
"How could you know it? Not from anything Wingfield said or did, I'm sure."
"No; but Jerry Blacklock was with him—and Jerry's face is an open book for any one who cares to read it. Won't you please tell me the worst, Breckenridge?"
"There isn't any worst," denied Ballard, lying promptly for love's sake. "We had luncheon together, the four of us, in honour of Bromley's recovery. Afterward, Wingfield spun yarns for us—as he has a habit of doing when he can get an audience of more than one person. Some of his stories were more grewsome than common. I don't wonder that Jerry had a left-over thrill or two in his face."
She looked up from behind the eye-shading hand. "Do you dare to repeat those stories to me?"
His laugh lacked something of spontaneity.
"It is hardly a question of daring; it is rather a matter of memory—or the lack of it. Who ever tries to make a record of after-dinner fictions? Wingfield's story was a tale of impossible crimes and their more impossible detection; the plot and outline for a new play, I fancied, which he was trying first on the dog. Blacklock was the only one of his three listeners who took him seriously."
She was silenced, if not wholly convinced; and when she spoke again it was of the convalescent assistant.