“No. But if, for instance, his physician had told him he had not long to live, and he felt something give way within him—that might cause it.”
I suppressed the anxious note in my voice as I said, “Cause what? You have not said, Miss Colfax.”
She laughed. “That is true. I haven’t, have I?” Serious again, she went on. “He seems worried. Something seems to follow him about—some thought, some apprehension, some worry.”
“It is a new difficulty somewhere that has come up in the trial of a case.”
She shook her head.
“Let us walk,” she said. “No, it is not that—nothing ordinary. A word from me and he would explain. But this time when I ask, he merely smiles and says, ‘Nothing, Julie, nothing.’”
“Can it be that I am the cause?” I said before I could stop myself. “Has he found out that we—”
“I told him,” she said, “that we—”
She stopped there, too, and looked at me.
“No,” she went on. “It is something else. He went out for a stroll night before last. Usually he is gone a half-hour at least. But this time he had hardly had time to go down the steps before I heard his key in the door again and the feet of ‘Laddie’ on the hall floor. I ran out to ask if he had forgotten anything, and it was a dreadful shock to me.”