"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews—your accusations?"
The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme. The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:
"And you want—what?"
"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet altogether."
"I'm afraid I don't understand—fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"
"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her. "Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this dreadful suspense!"
Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"
"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness. "I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm anxious—oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace—to make an agreement with you—a financial arrangement——" She paused the fractional part of a second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"
"Yes; that's clear."