“But don’t you see,” broke in the girl, “it is all Mr. Boyce! It is to be assumed that he will do this, to be taken for granted he will do that, to be hoped that he has done the other. That is what I am anxious about. Has he done these things? Will he do them?”
“And that, of course, is what I cannot tell you,” said Reuben. “How can I know?”
“But you can find out.”
The lawyer knitted his ordinarily placid brows for a moment in thought. Then he slowly shook his head. “I am afraid not,” he said, slowly. “I should be very angry if the railroad people, for example, set him to examining what I had done for them; angry with him, especially, for accepting such a commission.”
“I am sorry, Mr. Tracy, if I seem to have proposed anything dishonorable to you,” Miss Kate responded, with added formality in voice and manner. “I did not mean to.”
“How could I imagine such a thing?” said Reuben, more readily than was his wont. “I only sought to make a peculiar situation clear to you, who are not familiar with such things. If I asked him questions, or meddled in the matter at all, he would resent it; and by usage he would be justified in resenting it. That is how it stands.”
“Then you cannot help me, after all!” She spoke despondingly now, with the low, rich vibration in her tone which Reuben had dwelt so often on in memory since he first heard it. “And I had counted so much upon your aid,” she added, with a sigh.
“I would do a great deal to be of use to you,” the young man said, earnestly, and looked her in the face with calm frankness; “a great deal, Miss Minster, but—”
“Yes, but that ‘but’ means everything. I repeat, in this situation you can do nothing.”
“I cannot take a brief against my partner.”