She lifted her disturbing eyes, and again absorbed his in her own. She also said “Yes,” although her eyes in their mysterious prescience of all he was thinking disclaimed the necessity of any answer at all. He smiled vacantly. There was a long pause. On which she slowly disengaged her parasol from the carpet pattern and stood up.
“I reckon that’s about all,” she said.
“Er—yes—but one moment,” said the Colonel, vaguely. He would have liked to keep her longer, but with her strange premonition of him he felt powerless to detain her, or explain his reason for doing so. He instinctively knew she had told him all; his professional judgment told him that a more hopeless case had never come to his knowledge. Yet he was not daunted, only embarrassed. “No matter,” he said, vaguely. “Of course I shall have to consult with you again.” Her eyes again answered that she expected he would, but she added, simply, “When?”
“In the course of a day or two,” said the Colonel, quickly. “I will send you word.” She turned to go. In his eagerness to open the door for her he upset his chair, and with some confusion, that was actually youthful, he almost impeded her movements in the hall, and knocked his broad-brimmed Panama hat from his bowing hand in a final gallant sweep. Yet as her small, trim, youthful figure, with its simple Leghorn straw hat confined by a blue bow under her round chin, passed away before him, she looked more like a child than ever.
The Colonel spent that afternoon in making diplomatic inquiries. He found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church—the evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed his own impressions of the alleged lover—a serious-minded, practically abstracted man—abstentive of youthful society, and the last man apparently capable of levity of the affections or serious flirtation. The Colonel was mystified—but determined of purpose—whatever that purpose might have been.
The next day he was at his office at the same hour. He was alone—as usual—the Colonel’s office really being his private lodgings, disposed in connecting rooms, a single apartment reserved for consultation. He had no clerk; his papers and briefs being taken by his faithful body-servant and ex-slave “Jim” to another firm who did his office-work since the death of Major Stryker—the Colonel’s only law partner, who fell in a duel some years previous. With a fine constancy the Colonel still retained his partner’s name on his door-plate—and, it was alleged by the superstitious, kept a certain invincibility also through the manes of that lamented and somewhat feared man.
The Colonel consulted his watch, whose heavy gold case still showed the marks of a providential interference with a bullet destined for its owner, and replaced it with some difficulty and shortness of breath in his fob. At the same moment he heard a step in the passage, and the door opened to Adoniram K. Hotchkiss. The Colonel was impressed; he had a duellist’s respect for punctuality.
The man entered with a nod and the expectant, inquiring look of a busy man. As his feet crossed that sacred threshold the Colonel became all courtesy; he placed a chair for his visitor, and took his hat from his half-reluctant hand. He then opened a cupboard and brought out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses.
“A—er—slight refreshment, Mr. Hotchkiss,” he suggested, politely. “I never drink,” replied Hotchkiss, with the severe attitude of a total abstainer. “Ah—er—not the finest bourbon whiskey, selected by a Kentucky friend? No? Pardon me! A cigar, then—the mildest Havana.”
“I do not use tobacco nor alcohol in any form,” repeated Hotchkiss, ascetically. “I have no foolish weaknesses.”