“Siddle?”
She turned on Winter a face of sudden awe.
“How can you possibly guess?” she said wonderingly, and sheer bewilderment dried her tears.
“My business is nine-tenths guesswork. At any rate, we are on firm ground now. If you could please yourself, I suppose, Mr. Siddle would not come to tea to-day!”
“He certainly would not,” declared the girl emphatically.
“You believe he is coming for a purpose?”
“Yes.”
“Elkin—I must drag him in again for an instant—pretends that the commotion aroused in the village by this murder would incline you favorably to a proposal of marriage. Mr. Siddle may have discovered some virtue in the theory.”
“Did Mr. Elkin really hint that I needed him as a shield?”
Doris was genuinely angry now. She little imagined that Winter was playing on her emotions with a master hand.