She hesitated a moment, and sat staring half apologetically into the old man’s face.
“Well, madam, what am I to promise?”
“That this visit of mine shall be kept a profound secret.”
John Strong elevated his eyebrows.
“If you will first tell me your name, madam—” he suggested.
“My name?”
“I shall be better able to understand the situation.”
The lady in the pink toque drew off her gloves with nervous jerks and laid them neatly in her lap. Then she put her veil up and moistened her lips with her tongue.
“My name is Mabel Saker,” she said, with her eyes fixed on the man’s face; “probably you remember that name.”
Most certainly John Strong remembered it. The expression on his massive and determined face betrayed the unpleasant familiarity of those few syllables. He sat in silence for the moment, his gray eyes fixed on the woman before him.