John Hubbard gazed upon her wonderingly.
He had not dreamed of arousing such a sleeping lioness; he had believed that she would be so overwhelmed by the proofs and the power which he held in his hands that she would tamely submit to the inevitable, and relinquish all right or title to the Brewster estate, whereupon he would come without an effort into possession of her fortune, which he had so long coveted.
“And whom will you choose as your attorney to contest this case, Miss Brewster?” he inquired, in a harsh, rasping voice, after recovering a little from his surprise at the stand she had taken.
“I do not know yet, and I should not tell you if I did,” she coldly responded. Then she added thoughtlessly: “Gerald will advise me. Perhaps Mr. Lyttleton——”
A vicious, sibilant oath here interrupted her as she uttered these names.
“Neither is in New York. They sailed again for Europe a week ago to-day,” John Hubbard added, in a tone of vindictive triumph.
Allison started violently, then flushed a wounded crimson. This explained why she had not heard from Gerald, she thought. Doubtless his employer had been suddenly recalled to England upon some business connected with “the complicated case” that he was conducting there.
And yet she felt, with a terrible sense of loss and pain, that Gerald might at least have found time to drop her a line, telling her of his unexpected flitting. It was very strange, and she was deeply wounded, but she did not once suspect foul play—that John Hubbard might have been tampering with her correspondence.
Such was the case, however. No letter of hers had been allowed to reach Gerald; while, at that very moment, two tender epistles from her lover, one of them telling her that he and his employer had been summoned abroad again, and giving her his London address, were tucked snugly away in the villain’s wallet.
“Very well,” she proudly returned, on recovering herself a little; “there are other talented lawyers. I shall find some one to help me.”