ossibilities.

It was with some such sort of suspended animation that I stared down
over the balustrade and waited, my look glued upon the front door. It
swung inward with a slowness inexpressibly aggravating. And then I
recoiled with a little cry.

Miss Genevieve Cooper was standing in the lower hall, pale and
trembling, and darting quick nervous glances in every direction.

CHAPTER XI

A PACT

At my involuntary expression of amazement, Miss Cooper looked up, and our
eyes met. Her charming face immediately broke into a smile; her fears
seemed to fall away from her like the dissolving of a sun-smitten mist.

"Mr. Swift!" she exclaimed under her breath. Her voice expressed relief.
And, too, she spoke as if there might be others in the house whom her
errand did not in the least concern. "I 'm so glad! I was afraid I
should not find you here."

The idea of her wanting to find me for _any_ reason was distinctly
pleasing. I 'm afraid I appeared for the moment a trifle foolish; I was
tongue-tied, at any rate.

"May I come up?" she went on brightly. "Or will you come down?"

She was so pretty standing there and looking up at me, so everything that
a dainty, refined little lady should be, that I could have remained
indefinitely watching her.

But I 'm glad to say that I did not. I found my tongue by and by, and
voiced some inane remark to the effect that she might most assuredly
"come up," if she had the least inclination to do so, but, on the other
hand, that I was more than willing to "come down." Which I did, when she
made known her choice by sitting down in the settle Stodger and I had
occupied some hours earlier.

But I moved down the steps deep in meditation. Great as had been my
surprise when the opening front door disclosed Miss Cooper, I was not
long in surmising why she had come, and I was more than a trifle
reluctant to discuss the brutal details of the tragedy with a lady so
obviously gentle and refined. The subject was so utterly foreign to
anything within her experience that I felt she could harken to and review
the different aspects of the crime only with shuddering aversion. But,
dear me, how incapable is any man of estimating a woman's fortitude!

While I descended to her, she continued to talk--the merest bit flurried,
perhaps, but with a direct, fearless glance which the dullest
comprehension must have understood.

"I suppose I should have rapped," she was saying; "but who w