Miss Wolcott regarded him for a moment with an observant scrutiny which she made no attempt to disguise, and then she turned to her grandfather.
"It is time for your walk, Dandy," she said. She got him his overcoat, hat, and stick from the hall, and herself buttoned his coat up to his throat.
"You see how she spoils me," Mr. Wolcott said, with evident pride in his voice. "I'm old enough to look out for myself."
Edith did not speak. In grave silence she gave him his gloves, and watched him put them on while Lyon as intently watched her. She was a tall girl of perhaps twenty-five, with eyes of midnight blackness, broad black eyebrows that drooped in straight heavy lines toward her temples, and black hair that was drawn in smooth, broad bands at the side of her head to repeat the drooping line of her brows. Her mouth drooped too, in lines too firm to be called pensive, too proud to be sad. Altogether it was a face of mystery,--a face not easily read, but not the less powerful in its attraction. Lyon had a swift comprehension of Lawrence's feeling.
If this woman was in any way connected with the murder, the matter was serious as well as delicate. Lyon's pulses began to tingle as a hunter's do when he sees a mysterious "track" which he does not understand.
She let her grandfather out at the front door, and then came back to the room where Lyon was waiting. Calmly seating herself, she bent an inquiring and unsmiling look upon him. It struck him that she had shown nothing of her grandfather's tendency to unnecessary words.
"I have come at the request of Mr. Lawrence, who wished me to bring you a message," Lyon said.
There was something like a flash of light in her shadowy eyes, but whether it meant eagerness or anger, love or hate, Lyon could not say. She bent that same intent, unsmiling regard upon him, with only a deepening of its intentness, as though waiting for his next word with held breath.
"Mr. Lawrence considered it important that I should see you personally and at once, since he could not come himself to explain his reasons for what may sound like an extraordinary request," he went on deliberately.
She moved restlessly. "I have not seen Mr. Lawrence since--"