Steele Weir felt an angry tug at his sleeve. He looked around and beheld Janet Hosmer’s eyes distended with incredulity.
“Come away, come away,” she whispered. “I should never have believed it if I hadn’t heard with my own ears!”
Keeping close to the line of buildings, they skirted 70 the crowd, still unnoticed, and left it behind. She walked with quick nervous steps; her hand yet unconsciously grasped his coat sleeve. All the way to her home, which they found dark since a messenger had called the doctor to the court house and the Mexican girl servant also was gone, she said nothing.
“Come up on the veranda; I want to talk,” she announced when he opened the gate.
“Wouldn’t it be best if you took your mind off the whole thing, by a book or something else? I’ll go.”
“As if I could take my mind off! There are matters in this I must know. You may wonder when I say it, Mr. Weir, but this happening concerns me more than you dream.” Her dark glowing gaze brooded on him with a sort of intense determination. Then she went on, “It––it involves my whole future as well as your own, though in a different way. So come inside, if you please.”
Weir in silence accompanied her upon the dark, broad, vine-clad porch. In the half-gloom he found chairs for them.
“I’m going to the point at once,” she declared. “Why did Mr. Sorenson talk in such a fashion?” And he could feel her bending forward as if hanging on his answer.
“That’s the one thing I can’t discuss,” said he.
“I must know, I must know.”