He and Zara will just have to look out
for themselves, I guess. Bessie, don't you think Zara must have gone
with those people in the car willingly?"

"Yes, I do," said Bessie. "But--"

"Then I think she and her father are an ungrateful pair, and they
deserve anything that happens to them! I'm certainly not going to worry
myself about them any more, and I should think you would drop the whole
thing, Charlie Jamieson, and attend to your own affairs!"

"Hold on! You're going a bit too fast, Eleanor," he said, laughing
lightly. "Let's see what Bessie thinks about it."

Bessie, who had flushed too, but not with anger, when Eleanor thus gave
her resentment full play, was glad of the chance to speak.

"I do think Zara went off willingly and of her own accord," she said.
"I'm sure of that, because she couldn't have been taken away without my
hearing something."

"Well, then," began Eleanor, "doesn't that prove--"

"But if Zara was willing to go off that way, I believe it's because she
thought she was doing the right thing," Bessie went on, determinedly.
"Someone must have seen her and told her something she believed, though
perhaps it wasn't true."

"Of course!" said Jamieson, heartily, "That's what I've thought from the
start, and don't you see who it probably was? Why, Brack! He was in the
neighborhood yesterday morning and he must have seen her. He might have
told her anything--any wild story. You see, we are pretty much in the
dark about this affair yet. We don't know why these people are so keen
after Zara's father, or why they've put up this job on him. So I don't
think I'll get mad and drop it just because Zara and her father have
probably been fooled into acting in a way that would seem likely to
irritate me."

Eleanor was regretful at once.

"Oh, you're ever so much more sensible than I am, Charlie," she said.
"It made me angry to think they were acting so when all we wanted was to
help them, and I lost my temper."

"I suspect that that is just what Brack hoped I would do, Eleanor.
And it makes me all the more determined to stick to the case. You see,
I'm actually lawyer for Zara's father still, and unless I consent to a
change of lawyers, he'll have trouble putting Brack in my place. Brack
knows that, too, if he doesn't--and he knows, also, that I know one or
two things about him that make it a good idea for him to be careful,
unless he wants to be disbarred."

"Then you'll keep on working and you'll t