"Well, I study you. Then I begin to see my way. It was only the kind of idea that would creep into the brain of a novelist who does not scruple to endow even his most intimate friends with ferocious qualities for business purposes. But I allowed myself to think that the reason why you had come to Lytton Avenue was because you were in some way interested in the Corner House. There you have the first faint indication of the shaping of the story.
"Here in the dull and gloomy Corner House, with its dark and gloomy tragedy, cheek by jowl with the hardness and glitter and brilliancy of Lytton Avenue. If my adventurer wants a big dark cupboard to hide things, where can she have a better one than the Corner House! If I bore you----"
"Bore me!" Leona cried. "Never more interested in my life. Subtlety of this kind always appeals to me. Proceed."
"Again, it is a little strange that I have already built a romance round the Corner House before the heroine came along. I told you once that I had known the owner of the Corner House before the tragedy. I had my heroine and I had my plot. A plot of vengeance and wounded pride.
"But stranger still to say, the live heroine, yourself, is more deeply interested than I imagined. We will say that she did a foolish thing. She fell in love with one of her own guests--Dr. Bruce, to be plain."
Leona quivered but said nothing. It was only by a motion of her hand that she signalled Lawrence to proceed.
"Well, this love came--the wild, unreasoning passion of the South. Dr. Bruce was pushed on, his fortune was being rapidly made. Then my heroine makes a discovery in strict accordance with the conditions of the game. Her governess and the doctor are affianced to one another."
"It is always thus in books," Leona said, with a hard smile.
"Inevitably. But you were not in a book, unfortunately. You were flesh and blood and you took your own way. You thought you had been slighted. You made up your mind to get your revenge at any price. All the same, you could not see your way. You wanted a neat plot to get Bruce into trouble, for he had bad taste in not caring for you. You used the simple expedient of stealing mine."