"Well, you bet there's no danger of me not understanding you," Ann sneered. "Get that shawl."
Without another word he groped up the dark steps. Ann heard him walking about on the floor above, striking matches and uttering exclamations of anger. Presently she heard him coming. When half-way down the stairs he paused and threw the shawl to her.
"There it is," he said, sullenly. "Leave my revolver on the steps."
Ann caught the shawl, which, like some winged thing, swooped down through the darkness, and the next instant she had lowered the hammer of the revolver and laid it on the lowest step of the stairs.
"All right, it's an even swap," she chuckled—"your gun for our shawl. Now go to your bed and sleep on this. It's my opinion that, bad as you are, young man, I've done you a favor to-night."
"There's one thing I'll try to find out," he summoned up retaliatory courage to say, "and that is why you are bothering yourself so much about the daughter of a woman you are doing all you can to injure."
Ann laughed from the door as she crossed the threshold, the shawl under her arm. "It will do you good to study on that problem," she said. "You find that out, and I'll pay you well for the answer. I don't know that myself."
From the window of his room above, Langdon watched her as she passed through the gate and disappeared on the lonely road.
"She won't tell it," he decided. "She'll keep quiet, unless it is her plan to hold it over Jane Hemingway. That may be it—and yet if that is so, why didn't she—wait?"