"I want to ask you if you think it fair to me or my son, to leave us in ignorance of the place where you are to meet the thieves who stole our—my son's jewels?"
"Mrs. Hallam," he said soberly, "if I am going to meet Mr. Calendar or Mr. Mulready, I have no assurance of that fact."
There was only the briefest of pauses, during which she analyzed this; then, quickly, "But you hope to?" she snapped.
He felt that the only adequate retort to this would be a shrug of his shoulders; doubted his ability to carry one off; and again took refuge in silence.
The woman abandoned a second plan of siege, with a readiness that did credit to her knowledge of mankind. She thought out the next very carefully, before opening with a masked battery.
"Mr. Kirkwood, can't we be friends—this aside?"
"Nothing could please me more, Mrs. Hallam!"
"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you—"
"And I, too, have been rude."
"Last night, when you cut away so suddenly, you prevented my making you a proposal, a sort of a business proposition...."