Knowing his taste for brevity, she condensed the story of her day's wanderings, not omitting, however, the incidents which seemed to connect McCausland with the pretended English cracksman.
Toward the end of the narrative she perceived an unwonted wandering of attention in her listener. A trio of street minstrels, with flute, violin and harp, had set up a passionate Spanish dance tune, just far enough away to afford that confused blending of harmonies which adds so much to the effect of carelessly rendered music. Shagarach's eyes had left Emily's face and strayed toward the window. Twice he had asked her to repeat, as though he were catching up a lost thread. At last he arose abruptly and shut down the sash, muffling the minstrelsy at the height of its wildest abandon.
"Our street troubadours distract you?" asked Emily.
"The violinist is a gypsy," said the lawyer, shutting his eyes. Emily remembered this saying afterward, and even now she began to understand why a certain compassion, mingled with the fear and admiration which this man so gifted, but so meanly surrounded, aroused.
"That is all?" he said. She thought it amounted to a good deal. "I fear Miss Barlow may not descend the stairs as gayly as she mounted them."
"What have I done? How have I blundered?" she asked herself.
"To have caught McCausland napping was a pleasant diversion, but of little practical value. He is merely playing the nest-egg game."
"The nest-egg game?"
"Dressing up as a convict, locating himself in the adjoining cell and confessing some enormity himself so as to induce his bird to lay. The trick has an excellent basis in psychology, since the second law of life is to imitate."
"And the first?"