Lyon interrupted. "Pardon me, may I give you the message before you say anything more? Mr. Lawrence has been arrested on the charge of killing Warren Fullerton--"
"Oh, heavens, has it come to that?" the girl gasped, with horror on her face.
Lyon raised a warning hand. "And his urgent request to you is that you refrain from giving any information which, you may possess in regard to the matter to any one. That of course includes myself."
Miss Wolcott was holding fast to the arms of the chair and her pallor seemed to have deepened visibly, but she did not lose her self-control for a moment.
Lyon would have given much to be able to tell whether the feeling which she obviously held back from expression was fear or concern or contempt.
"You of course saw the account of the murder in the morning papers," he continued, deeming it advisable to put her in possession of the situation as fully as possible. "The inquest was held today, and Mr. Lawrence has been taken into custody,--merely on suspicion, of course. It is known that he had had a quarrel with Mr. Fullerton, and his broken cane was found in the neighborhood."
Miss Wolcott's intense eyes seemed trying to drag out his words faster than he could utter them, but she asked no questions.
"This means that he will be held for the action of the Grand Jury, which will meet in about two weeks. Of course he will have an attorney to present his case. You are not to think that his arrest necessarily means anything worse than the necessity of making his innocence as obvious to the world at large as it is now to his friends. But in the meantime his great and immediate anxiety was that you should be warned to say nothing about the whole matter. Frankly, Miss Wolcott, I don't know whether your silence is to protect him or to protect some one else, but I do know that he was profoundly in earnest in hoping that you would preserve that silence unbroken as long as possible."
"What do you mean by as long as possible?" she asked, slowly.
"If you should be summoned as a witness at the trial, you will of course have to tell everything within your knowledge connected with the affair."