Burke, however, as usual, paid no heed to the niceties of sentiment. They had small place in his concerns as an official of police. His sole ambition just now was to fix the crime definitely on the perpetrator.
“You'll swear he killed him?” he asked, briskly, well content with this concrete result of the entanglement.
Mary subtly evaded the question, while seeming to give unqualified assent.
“Why not?” she responded listlessly.
At this intolerable assertion as he deemed it, Edward Gilder was reanimated. He sat rigidly erect in his, chair. In that frightful moment, it came to him anew that here was in verity the last detail in a consummate scheme by this woman for revenge against himself.
“God!” he cried, despairingly. “And that's your vengeance!”
Mary heard, and understood. There came an inscrutable smile on her curving lips, but there was no satisfaction in that smile, as of one who realized the fruition of long-cherished schemes of retribution. Instead, there was only an infinite sadness, while she spoke very gently.
“I don't want vengeance—now!” she said.
“But they'll try my boy for murder,” the magnate remonstrated, distraught.
“Oh, no, they can't!” came the rejoinder. And now, once again, there was a hint of the quizzical creeping in the smile. “No, they can't!” she repeated firmly, and there was profound relief in her tones since at last her ingenuity had found a way out of this outrageous situation thrust on her and on her husband.