se
no moral or respectable man should venture. Supposing one were caught in
an adjoining field cutting a corner!

"That's neither here nor there," he said evasively.

"Was there really anybody at all asking for him, or is the 'some one'
yourself?"

Her brother looked severe.

"Look here, Jean," said he, "you know where he has gone--I've got that
much out of you; and it's your duty to tell me."

Her eyes were fixed on him steadily.

"You think Frank and father have gone off together?"

"I know nothing about that."

"And that's why you are suddenly so curious about Frank?"

He regarded her in injured silence; but instead of appearing affected by
his unspoken reproach, she continued with an air of knowing both his
intentions and her own.

"If father wanted you to know he would have told you himself."

"It is for his own sake I want to find out."

"Then you admit you were trying to find out about father! What benefit
would it be to him if you knew?"

"It is most inconvenient at the office not knowing his address."

"If it really were very inconvenient, father would be certain to think
of that and send you his address himself."

"He has not thought of it."

"Well then, there can't be any great inconvenience."

Not for the first time in his life Andrew wished that all humanity
belonged to his own sensible, candid, trustworthy sex.

"I tell you there is," he insisted.

"I trust father implicitly," she replied.

"Oh, you think his recent behavior has been the kind of thing to inspire
confidence?"

"It has in me!" she answered enthusiastically.

"You have a high opinion of his sense," he sneered.

"A great deal higher than I have of anybody else's in the world--in
Edinburgh, anyhow!" she retorted, and with her chin held high broke off
the conference.

This was sufficiently exasperating, but it was not the worst that
treacherous sex could do. The widow's demeanor was a hundred times more
menacing. She was so motherly towards Jean, so sisterly towards his
unfortunate aunt, so skittishly condescending towards himself, that his
previous suspicions of her were sunshiny compared with the dark
convictions that lay heavier upon him each day. Her black eyes danced
mockingly whenever he looked into them; she seemed always to be hugging
the most delicious secret. Andrew doubted she had hugged more than a
secret in this house.

It was a further confirmation of her perfidy that ever since his
father's flight