"I'd hardly like to put it strongly one way or the other. I know the boy, if that's what you mean."
"It ain't." She considered him again. And again she was secretly pleased to see him stir under the cool probe of her eyes. "How long did you live with Terry?"
"He was with us twenty-four years." He turned and explained casually to Waters. "He was taken in as a foundling, you know. Quite against my advice. And then, at the end of the twenty-four years, the bad blood of his father came out, and he showed himself in his true colors. Fearful waste of time to us all—of course, we had to turn him out."
"Of course," nodded Waters sympathetically, and he looked wistfully down at his blueprint.
"Twenty-four years you lived with Terry," said the girl softly, "and you don't like him, I see."
Instantly and forever he was damned in her eyes. Anyone who could live twenty-four years with Terry Hollis and not discover his fineness was beneath contempt.
"I'll tell you," she said. "I've got to see Miss Elizabeth Cornish."
"H'm!" said Vance. "I'm afraid not. But—just what have you to tell her?"
The girl smiled.
"If I could tell you that, I wouldn't have to see her."