Thus absorbed, he suddenly heard Lucille's voice, low and tense:
"We'll have to leave it as it was be——"
Berne Webster interrupted her, a grain of bitterness in his words:
"Rather an unusual request, don't you think?"
"I wanted to tell you this after the talk in the library," she continued, "but there——"
They had approached Hastings from the south side of the house and, hidden from him by the verandah railing, were upon him before he could make his presence known. Now, however, he did so, warning them by standing up with a clamorous scraping of his feet on the floor. Instinctively, he had recoiled from overhearing their discussion of what was, he thought, a love-affair topic.
Lucille hurried to him, not that she had additional information to give him, but to renew her courage. Having called upon him for aid, she had in the usual feminine way decided to make her reliance upon him complete. And, under the influence of his reassuring kindliness, her hesitance and misgivings disappeared.
He had judged her feelings correctly during their conference in the parlour. At dinner, she had seen in him merely a pleasant, quiet-spoken old man, a typical "hick" farmer, who wore baggy, absurdly large clothing—"for the sake of his circulation," he said—and whose appearance in no way corresponded to his reputation as a learned psychologist and investigator of crime. Now, however, she responded warmly to his charm, felt the sincerity of his sympathy.
Seeing that she looked up to him, he enjoyed encouraging her, was bound more firmly to her interests.