“There is something in which you might help me,” she added, after revolving matters in her mind. “I need to see my brother—to talk with him alone. He has positively refused to receive me in his rooms. I cannot push my way there in the face of servants. Could you bring us together, do you think?”
Lance brightened.
“Why not? I have an appointment to wait for him at six on Friday. The people of the house are used to seeing me come and go, sometimes with a stenographer. I don’t know if you are aware that he does a steady business contributing ‘society personals’ to our paper and to others. His terms are high, but they like to have him, because he’s a sure thing. Will you prefer to go with me or to meet me there?”
“I shall be there at a quarter before six,” Alice had said, drawing a long breath.
She found Lance sitting in the hall.
“This is the lady I told you was coming to take my place, Bridget,” said Lance to the servant, pleasantly. Despite his shabby looks the maids of the boarding-house liked him, whom they called “Mr. Carmichael’s clerk.” The woman answered him in a jovial tone:
“All right, Mr. Lance. The young lady can go on up and sit in the sittin’-room.” As Lance said good evening and went out she added, sociably: “You run right up, miss. Second story front. But, laws, I remember you was here before! Our Mr. Carmichael do be mightily run after by the newspaper folks. He’s such a high-flyer in society. But he ain’t well, I’m thinking; he looks like a sheet o’ paper nowadays.”
The winter’s day had closed in as Alice entered her brother’s room, and sat down by the window, listening to the drip, drip of the rain upon the sills. She wanted time to think before he should come in.
He would resent her intrusion angrily, of course; but that would be nothing in comparison with his wrath when he should know for what she came.
For days she had carried fear around with her, and slept with it at night. Putting together one thing and another that had come to her about the unlucky dinner at Mrs. Ellison’s, she had conceived the horrible suspicion that her brother was the thief of the ring. Since convicting him as the source of the slanderous article inculpating Tom, this suspicion had been growing into assurance. Until that morning her chief yearning desire had been to put Lance’s article safely into Mr. Farnsworth’s hands. That accomplished, she had for a moment breathed freer. Then the blacker weight had settled down again. A desperate resolve possessed her. She must recover the ring from Ashton, and restore it to its owner!