“I should say it was impossible,” answered Reuben, after a pause.
Again the two girls exchanged glances, and then Kate, looking at her watch, rose to her feet. “We are already late, Mr. Tracy,” she said, offering him her hand, and unconsciously allowing him to hold it in his own as she went on: “We are both deeply indebted to you. We want you—oh, so much!—to help us. We will do everything you say; we will put ourselves completely in your hands, won’t we, Ethel?”
The younger sister said “Yes, indeed!” and then smiled as she furtively glanced up into Kate’s face and thence downward to her hand. Kate herself with a flush and murmur of confusion withdrew the fingers which the lawyer still held.
“Then you must begin,” he said, not striving very hard to conceal the delight he had had from that stolen custody of the gloved hand, “by resolving not to say a word to anybody—least of all to your mother—about having consulted me. You must realize that we have to deal with criminals—it is a harsh word, I know, but there can be no other—and that to give them warning before our plans are laid would be a folly almost amounting to crime itself. If I may, Miss Kate”—there was a little gulp in his throat as he safely passed this perilous first use of the familiar name—“I will write to you to-morrow, outlining my suggestions in detail, telling you what to do, perhaps something of what I am going to do, and naming a time—subject, of course, to your convenience—when we would better meet again.”
Thus, after some further words on the same lines, the interview ended. Reuben went to the door with them, and would have descended to the street to bear them company, but they begged him not to expose himself to the cold, and so, with gracious adieus, left him in his office and went down, the narrow, unlighted staircase, picking their way.
On the landing, where some faint reflection of the starlight and gas-light outside filtered through the musty atmosphere, Kate paused a moment to gather the weaker form of her sister protectingly close to her.
“Are you utterly tired out, pet?” she asked. “I’m afraid it’s been too much for you.”
“Oh, no,” said Ethel. “Only—yes, I am tired of one thing—of your slowness of perception. Why, child alive, Mr. Tracy has been just burning to take up our cause ever since he first saw you. You thought he was indifferent, and all the while he was over head and ears in love with you! I watched him every moment, and it was written all over his face; and you never saw it!”
The answering voice fell with a caressing imitation of reproof upon the darkness: “You silly puss, you think everybody is in love with me!” it said.
Then the two young ladies, furred and tippeted, emerged upon the sidewalk, stepped into their carriage, and were whirled off homeward under the starlight.