“After a minute she said: ‘Lord Inley, I’m looking for my cat. Have you seen him?’
“‘Yes,’ I said; ‘he’s run into the house.’
“It was a lie, but I wanted her to go in. I had slipped the revolver back into my pocket, and tried to assume a perfectly simple, natural air. I fancied it would be very easy to impose on Miss Bassett when I heard her question. It sounded so innocent, as if the old lady was full of her pet. I even thought, perhaps, she had not known what the revolver was when she looked at it.
“‘Did he run into the house?’ she said, still looking at me from under her wrinkled eyelids.
“‘Yes; when you came out. He was here on the path with me. You called “Johnny!” and he ran off there between the mulberry-trees.’
“All the time I was speaking to her I had an eye to the road, and my ears were listening like an Indian’s when he puts his head to the ground to hear the pad of his enemy.
“Miss Bassett stood there quietly for a moment as if she were considering something. She looked prim. I remember that even now—prim as a caricature. It was only a moment, but it seemed to me an hour. ‘If they should come,’ I thought, ‘while she is out here!’ The sweat came out all over my face with impatience—an agony of impatience. I longed to take the old lady by the shoulders, push her into the cottage, lock her in, and be alone, able to watch the bit of road from the Abbey gates to the wicket. But I could do nothing. I was obliged to repress every sign of agitation. It was devilish.”
He got up with a sudden jerk from his chair, and stood by the fire. Even the telling of that moment had set beads of moisture on his square, low forehead.
“At last she spoke again.
“‘I wonder if you’d mind coming in for a minute to help me see if Johnny really is in the house?’ she said.