That was too much for Cora. She stepped to the door of the tea-room with dismissal in her manner. He knew she intended him to leave at once.
"But what I want to know," he said, deliberately following her, "is just who this Thayer girl is. It is important that we should know, to go on with the—"
"We!" interrupted Cora. "Pray, who are 'we'?"
"Why, my father's firm, the lawyers, you know," he stammered. "Some day, Miss Kimball, I expect to represent the firm of Roland, Reed & Company."
Cora turned and looked at him. It was on that very spot that she had turned to Ed—Ed was so like this young man, the same dark, handsome youth, and just about his age.
But Ed was, after all, so different—so very different.
Cora was gaining time as she strove to hold him by her magnetic glance.
Any youth would accept it; he did not despise it.
"Mr. Roland," she said, in her own inimitable velvet tones, "you are making a very great mistake. If you really believe that Cecilia Thayer had anything to do with the loss of that child's book, you are wrong; if you think she had any other than humane motives in visiting the child, you are wrong again. Cecilia Thayer—"
"Oh, now come, Cora," he interrupted. "You don't mind me calling you Cora? I know the whole scheme. Your brother Jack is—well, he is quite clever, but not clever enough to cover up his tracks." He grasped Cora's arm and actually dragged her to him. "Don't you know that Cissy Thayer and Jack Kimball are suspected of abduction? That Wren Salvey has been stolen-stolen, do you hear?"