"I'll tell you what it is." Lucille spoke now with cool precision, as yet untouched by the horror she had expected to feel. "It's a matter of money."
Mrs. Brace's tongue came out to the edge of the thin line of her lips. Her nostrils quivered, once, to the sharply indrawn breath. Her eyes were more furtive.
"Money?" she echoed. "For what?"
"There's no good of my making long explanations, Mrs. Brace," Lucille said. "I've read the newspapers, every line of them, about—our trouble. And I saw the references to your finances, your lack of money."
"Yes?" Mrs. Brace's right hand lay on her lap; the thumb of it began to move against the forefinger rapidly, the motion a woman makes in feeling the texture of cloth—or the trick of a bank clerk separating paper money.
"Yes. I read, also, what you said about the tragedy. Today I noticed that the only note of newness in the articles in the papers came from you—from your saying that 'in a few days, three or four at the outside'—that was your language, I'm quite sure—you'd produce evidence on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so great, that your threats—I mean, predictions, or opinions—colour everything that's written by the reporters. You see?"
"Do I see what?"
Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity.
"Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make endless trouble for us—for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side."
"Well?"