XIV
MR. CROWN FORMS AN ALLIANCE
"If you've as much as five hundred dollars at your disposal—pin-money savings, perhaps—anything you can check on without the knowledge of others, you can do it," Hastings urged, ending a long argument.
"I! Take it to her myself?" Lucille still protested, although she could not refute his reasonings.
"It's the only way that would be effective—and it wouldn't be so difficult. I had counted on your courage—your unusual courage."
"But what will it accomplish? If I could only see that, clearly!"
She was beginning to yield to his insistence.
They were in the rose garden, in the shade of a little arbor from whose roof the great red flowers drooped almost to the girl's hair. He was acutely aware of the pathetic contrast between her white, ravaged face and the surrounding scene, the fragrance, the roses of every colour swaying to the slow breeze of late afternoon, the long, cool shadows. He found it hard to force her to the plan, and would have abandoned it but for the possibilities it presented to his mind.
"I've already touched on that," he applied himself to her doubts. "I want you to trust me there, to accept my solemn assurance that, if Mrs. Brace accepts this money from you on our terms, it will hasten my capture of the murderer. I'll say more than that: you are my only possible help in the matter. Won't you believe me?"
She sat quite still, a long time, looking steadily at him with unseeing eyes.