However successful Ilingsworth believed he had been in his effort to persuade himself that his intuitive faculties had been at fault, when they warned him of some alien presence in the room, it must be acknowledged that he continued to look a little tentatively. At length, however, his uneasiness wore off, and his manner, while again holding out the picture for Leslie to look upon, softened so perceptibly that it would have given one the impression that his visit there was more in the nature of a social call than the tempestuous errand of business vengeance that it was.
"I wish you had known her," Ilingsworth said; "and I'm rather surprised that you don't. We're Morristown people, you know, and Elinor, well, Elinor's friends are all very nice people. Even in New York, she——"
Leslie's eyes sought the ground.
"We go out very little here," she said. "Of course I have my friends, and there was a time.... But since my father married a second time, why——" This girlish confidence trailed off into uncertainty. She handed back the photograph. "But I should like to know her," she declared with sincerity.
"I wish you did," he began, and then added, "even in the light of present things, I wish you did."
In the silence that followed Leslie fell to wondering about the man before her, and it did not take her long to decide that she liked him. He was not, it is true, of the same shrewd, practical mould as her father. But she recognised that he had the high-strung temperament, so often a characteristic of the aristocrat. The sense of fear was fast leaving her.
"I—I'm going to apologise," he began at length, "for the fright I've given you, though my purpose hasn't flagged. And if I had a man to deal with—if I had met Peter V. Wilkinson, face to face again, who knows but the demon in me would come once more to the fore. You say you can't understand. Let me explain to you how it was: Up to thirteen months ago we, Elinor and I, had a quarter of a million dollars—that means nearly fifteen thousand dollars a year. And fifteen thousand in Morristown means decent living—even here in New York it would mean that. Then I met Wilkinson." His face grew livid, his hand clenched. "May heaven forgive me, why didn't I understand it was my quarter of a million that this vampire——"
The girl drew herself up and quickly interrupted him.
"Mr. Ilingsworth, I must remind you that you are speaking of my father."