“Will you let me go home as soon as I've told you the teensy little I know?”
“Yes,” Burke agreed promptly, with an encouraging smile. And for a good measure of reassurance, he added as one might to an alarmed child: “No one is going to hurt you, young lady.”
“Well, then, you see, it was this way,” began the brisk explanation. “Mr. Gilder was calling on me one afternoon, and he said to me then that he knew a very charming young woman, who——”
Here the speech ended abruptly, and once again the handkerchief was brought into play as the sobbing broke forth with increased violence. Presently, the girl's voice rose in a wail.
“Oh, this is dreadful—dreadful!” In the final word, the wail broke to a moan.
Burke felt himself vaguely guilty as the cause of such suffering on the part of one so young, so fair, so innocent. As a culprit, he sought his best to afford a measure of soothing for this grief that had had its source in his performance of duty.
“That's all right, little lady,” he urged in a voice as nearly mellifluous as he could contrive with its mighty volume. “That's all right. I have to keep on telling you. Nobody's going to hurt you—not a little bit. Believe me! Why, nobody ever would want to hurt you!”
But his well-meant attempt to assuage the stricken creature's wo was futile. The sobbing continued. With it came a plaintive cry, many times repeated, softly, but very miserably.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
“Isn't there something else you can tell me about this woman?” Burke inquired in desperation before the plaintive outburst. He hoped to distract her from such grief over her predicament.