“By Jove!” he exclaimed, under his breath.
Then, as Fanny looked inquiringly at him he covered his blunder by fanning himself with his hands and asking if the room were not very hot and close.
“Let’s go outside, where it is cooler,” he said.
Fanny was glad to go and Mark and Tom were glad to have her and be rid for a while of their inquisitive guest.
“How much longer could you have stood that,” Tom asked Mark, whose face was bathed in perspiration, and who only replied, “I think it is getting rather hot;” then he went out at the rear door and strolled off into the woods with Nero for company, while Tom stood his ground, deciding to make himself so agreeable to Roy that he would forget the detective Converse and the robbers and his intention to “run them down.”
Meantime Roy and Fanny were walking along the road in the moonlight, Fanny supremely happy and trying to answer the many questions Roy was putting to her about the hold-up in which she had a part. She thought she had told him all about it, but here he was asking her such funny questions; “How did Inez look when she confronted the robber? How did the robber look? that is, how tall was he?”
“Tall as I am?” he asked, and Fanny replied, “Oh, no; he was about as tall as Tom, and slimmer. He wore a sweater which made him look small.”
“How did Tom look when he came up?” was Roy’s next question.
Fanny couldn’t enlighten him much there. She didn’t think of Tom, she was so absorbed with Inez. She knew he picked up her hat, which was frightfully jammed, and straightened it, and put it on her head. Then she spoke of her diamonds, wondering how they could have gotten loose and if she would ever find them.
“Tom is still hopeful that after a heavy rain they may come to light and has promised to look for them.”