"I think it's better as it is," she said thoughtfully. "No one could have seen you. The moon rose late; the night at that time must have been pitch dark. The trees alone would have shielded you, even had any one been watching. Suspicion never would fall on you anyhow; you are too far above it, and Dave had been insulting people right and left the last year. But you want to avoid blackmail. The only thing that disturbs me is that that girl may have been on the back stairs when you came in. I'll come in for lunch and talk to her then. You keep to your room. Rest, and sleep if you can. I don't fancy you'll have early visitors. Everybody'll sleep late. I wish I could!"
"Will you stop in and see Dr. Lequeur about yourself—"
"If I can find a minute. Don't worry about me. I'm tough, and the Lord knows I ought to be immune."
But she found no time to see a doctor in her own behalf and returned to the Balfame house between twelve and one. Reporters were sitting on the box hedge and on the doorstep. She evaded them good-naturedly, but it was some time before she was admitted by the rebellious Frieda, who had been summoned to the front door some sixteen times during the forenoon.
When Dr. Anna finally found herself in the dark hall she saw that Frieda's face was swollen and tied up in a towel. The spectacle gave the doctor an instant opportunity.
"The worst infliction on earth, bar none!" she announced, following the maid into the kitchen. "Let me take a look at it? How long have you had it?"
"Two days," replied Frieda sullenly, unamenable to sympathy which offered no immediate surcease of pain.
"Abscess?"
"Don't know."
Frieda's mental processes were slow. Before she could follow the doctor's the bandage was ripped off and a sharp eye was examining the inflamed interior of her cavernous mouth. A moment later Dr. Anna had opened her doctor's bag and was anointing the surroundings of the tortured tooth with a brown liquid.