"He's so mistaken in what he's doing!" she said. "I don't understand him—really. You know how devoted to me he is. He called me into his room again an hour or two ago and tried to comfort me. He said he had reason to know everything would come out as it should. But he looked so—so uncertain!—Oh, Mr. Hastings, who did kill that woman?"
"I think I'll be able to prove who did it—let's see," he spoke with a light cheerfulness, and at the same time with sincerity; "I'll be able to prove it in less than a week after Mrs. Brace takes that money from you."
She said nothing to that, and he leaned forward sharply, peering at her face, illegible to him in the darkness of the verandah.
"So much depends on that, on you," he added. "You won't fail me—tomorrow?"
"I'll do my best," she said, earnestly, struggling against depression.
"She must take that money," he declared with great emphasis. "She must!"
"And you think she will?"
"Miss Sloane, I know she will," he said, a fatherly encouragement in his voice. "I'm seldom mistaken in people; and I know I've judged this woman correctly. Money's her weakness. Love of it has destroyed her already. Offering this bribe to anybody else situated as she is would be ridiculous—but she—she'll take it."
Lucille sat a long time on the verandah after Hastings had gone. She was far more depressed than he had suspected; she had to endure so much, she thought—the suspense, which grew heavier as time went by; the notoriety; Berne Webster still in danger of his life; her father's inexplicable pose of indifference toward everything; the suspicions of the newspapers and the public of both her father and Berne; and the waiting, waiting, waiting—for what?