She leaned toward him, bending from the waist, her eyes slightly widened, so that their effect was to give her a startled air.
"You don't mean you'll give it up!" she said, plainly entreating. "You won't give it up!"
"Are you quite sure you don't want me to give it up? Judge Wilton has asked me twice, out of politeness, not to give it up. Are you merely being polite?"
She smiled, looking tired, and shook her head.
"Really, Mr. Hastings, if you were to desert us now, I should be desperate—altogether. Desperate! Just that."
"I can't desert you," he said gently. "As I told Mr. Webster, I know too little and I suspect too much to do that."
Before she spoke again, she looked at him intently, drawing in her under lip a little against her teeth.
"What, Mr. Hastings?" she asked, then. "What do you suspect?"
"Let me answer that with a question," he suggested. "Last night, your one idea was that I could protect you and your father, everybody in the house here, by acting as your spokesman. I think you wanted to set me up as a buffer between all of you on the one side and the authorities and the reporters on the other. You wanted things kept down, nothing to get out beyond that which was unavoidable. Wasn't that it?"
"Yes; it was," she admitted, not seeing where his question led.