“Mr. Edward Gilder wishes to see you, Miss Turner,” she said, with no appreciation of anything dynamic in the announcement. “Shall I show him in?”
“Oh, certainly,” Mary answered, with an admirable pretense of indifference, while Burke glared at Demarest, and the District Attorney appeared ill at ease.
“He shouldn't have come,” Demarest muttered, getting to his feet, in reply to the puzzled glance of the Inspector.
Then, while Mary sat quietly in her chair at the desk, and the two men stood watching doubtfully the door, the maid appeared, stood aside, and said simply, “Mr. Gilder.”
There entered the erect, heavy figure of the man whom Mary had hated through the years. He stopped abruptly just within the room, gave a glance at the two men, then his eyes went to Mary, sitting at her desk, with her face lifted inquiringly. He did not pause to take in the beauty of that face, only its strength. He stared at her silently for a moment. Then he spoke in his oritund voice, a little tremulous from anxiety.
“Are you the woman?” he said. There was something simple and primitive, something of dignity beyond the usual conventions, in his direct address.
And there was the same primitive simplicity in the answer. Between the two strong natures there was no subterfuge, no suggestion of polite evasions, of tergiversation, only the plea of truth to truth. Mary's acknowledgment was as plain as his own question.
“I am the woman. What do you want?”... Thus two honest folk had met face to face.
“My son.” The man's answer was complete.
But Mary touched a tragic note in her question. It was asked in no frivolous spirit, but, of a sudden, she guessed that his coming was altogether of his own volition, and not the result of his son's information, as at first she had supposed.