"So-so!" bitterly exclaimed Poynter, half to himself. "My kind friend has not abandoned me yet." Then turning abruptly to Nora, he added: "And you believed this?"
"Clay!"
"Pardon, darling; I did not mean it," repentantly said Poynter. "No, I can trust you, if no one else."
And he clasped the little brown hand that had been laid upon his arm at her exclamation.
"I wish you would trust me; then, perhaps, I could tell better how to act," she said, looking up into his face, wistfully.
"And have I not? Well—did he tell you from where these hints came?"
"No, but I think—and yet again, I am puzzled," hesitated Nora.
"You think—?"
"That our strange visitor—this John Dement, he calls himself—is in some way mixed up with it. More than once I have accidentally overheard him and father speaking about you, but whenever they saw me, it would be dropped."
"The yellow-haired man that was with your father on Tuesday night?"