"You mean," she added quickly, eyes narrowed, "I suspect—actually suspect some one in this house?"
In his turn, he was non-committal, retorting:
"Don't you?"
She resented his insistence.
"There is only one idea possible, I think," she declared, rising: "the footsteps that I heard fled from the house, not into it. The murderer is not here."
He stood up, holding her gaze.
"I'm your representative now, Miss Sloane," he said, his manner fatherly in its solicitude. "My duty is to save you, and yours, in every way I can—without breaking the law. You realize what my job is—do you?"
"Yes, Mr. Hastings."
"And the advisability, the necessity, of utter frankness between us?"
"Yes." She said that with obvious impatience.