"So he claims." Julia's inflection was decidedly tart.
Forbes made one of his rare contributions to the conversation. "I wouldn't have believed such a thing possible myself, but blindness makes one an easy victim."
"Poor Burton!" murmured Julia, melting at once. "To think that any girl should have the heart to take such advantage of another's misfortune."
"But I can't see what she was getting at," Warren demurred. "I've heard that occasionally ladies represent themselves as younger than they really are, and the reason for that seems plain enough. But why the devil should a young girl want to make herself out an old maid of seventy?"
"Purely mercenary at the start," Julia opined. "As I understand it, Burton saw her advertisement for a boarder, and wrote her, supposing she was his father's old friend. And she decided to pass herself off as her great-aunt so as to get as much out of Burton as she could."
"That young woman must have plenty of nerve. It's plain she needed the money, as far as that goes. Place is terribly run-down."
"Oh, shockingly," Mrs. Knox corroborated him, in her deepest tones. "All the furniture I could see through the windows seemed mere wrecks."
"On its last legs," Warren agreed. He waited for a moment and then asked casually, "Well, what's the fuss about? What harm did it do?"
The two women uttered a simultaneous ejaculation of horror. "A piece of barefaced fraud," cried Mrs. Knox.
"She has been getting money under false pretenses," flared Julia. "I believe she can be arrested like any other swindler, and punished."