"I want a word with you, Mr. Chester," she said, and she moved towards him, the revolver hanging at her side.
She heard him gasp, and he stood as if paralyzed in the moonbeams which fell through the open doorway and the side-lights of frosted glass.
"Who are you?" he managed to articulate.
"Oh, you know me, I reckon, Mr. Chester. I'm Ann Boyd. I want to see you on a little private business, just between you and me, you know. It needn't go any further."
"Oh, Ann Boyd!" he exclaimed, and the thought ran through his bewildered brain that she had mistaken him for his father, and that he was accidentally running upon evidence of an intercourse between the two that he had thought was a thing of the past. "But, Mrs. Boyd," he said, "you've made a mistake. My father is away; he left for Savannah—"
"I didn't want to see your father," Ann snarled, angrily. "My business is with you, my fine young man, and nobody else."
"Me?" he gasped, in growing surprise. "Me?"
"Yes, you. I've come back for Virginia Hemingway's shawl. She says you kept it. Just between you and me," she went on, "I don't intend to leave a thing like that in the hands of a man of your stamp to hold over the poor girl and intimidate her with."
"You say—you say—" He seemed unable to formulate expression for his abject astonishment, and he left the door and aimlessly moved to the railing of the stairs and stood facing her. His eyes now fell on the revolver in her hand, and the sight of it increased his wondering perturbation.
"I said I wanted her shawl," Ann repeated, firmly, "and I don't see no reason why I should stand here all night to get it. You know what you did with it. Hand it to me!"