"Perhaps. We can try."
Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs. Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.
The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when he looked up.
Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"
"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.
His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met a troubled smile, grave and sweet.
"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How is Macdonald?"
"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."
Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share. Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naïve, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, heavy wave.
"We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him," Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."