"Why should he want you?" I demanded.
She looked at me a moment as if astonished that I should ask such a question. But there was that in my eyes which told her that my ignorance was anything but assumed.
"You really mean to say you don't know?" she asked incredulously.
"If I did know I wouldn't question you about it," I said shortly. "What is the reason?"
"Well, you see," she answered lightly, with just a slight uplift of her eyebrows—an old theatrical trick that I used to admire in the days gone by—"he happens to be my uncle."
"That puts another complexion on matters," I said half to myself. But her quick ear caught the drift of my remark and she was down on me like the wolf on the fold.
"You're in with him, are you?" she questioned, with that devouring flame I knew so well flaring up in her golden-brown eyes. "You're in with him ... in this?"
In a way I wasn't. As a matter-of-fact I suspected from her last words that she knew more about everything than I did, but I was perfectly sure that she wouldn't believe me if I denied it, so I said instead, "Yes, I am."
"I might have known it," she said with a little shake of her head. I didn't quite follow her logic, but I judged it best to let it pass. One would think from the way she spoke that there was something reprehensible in being mixed up in anything conducted by her venerable relative. I wondered why.
"Yes, you might have known it," I said, falling in with her own humor. "I have a habit of doing things I shouldn't."