of her questioner's words. "Why Jerome, what makes you
think I've seen him since then? Did he say--did anybody tell you--"

She broke off huskily and sat staring at her interlaced fingers dropped
in her lap.

"No--no. Of course not, Lydia," her sister hastened to reassure her,
crossing the room and putting a protecting arm about the girl's
shoulders. "He shouldn't have spoken as he did, knowing that you and
Gray--knowing how affairs stand."

"Well, I only thought since you and Stoddard are such great friends,"
Hardwick persisted, "he might have mentioned to you some excursion, or
made opportunity to talk with you alone, sometime last night--to--to
say something. Did he tell you where he was going, Lydia? Are you
keeping something from us that we ought to know? Remember this is no
child's play. It begins to look as though it might be a question of the
man's life."

Lydia Sessions started galvanically. She pushed off her sister's
caressing hand with a fierce gesture.

"There's nothing--no such relation as you're hinting at, Elizabeth,
between Gray Stoddard and me," she said sharply. Memory of what Gray had
(as she supposed) followed her into the library to say to her wrung a
sort of groan from the girl. "I suppose Matilda's told you that we
had--had some conversation in the library," she managed to say.

Her brother-in-law shook his head.

"We haven't questioned the servants yet," he said briefly. "We haven't
questioned anybody nor hunted up any evidence. MacPherson came direct to
me from Stoddard's stable boy. Gray did stop and talk to you last night?
What did he say?"

"I--why nothing in--I really don't remember," faltered Lydia, with so
strange a look that both her sister and Hardwick looked at her in
surprise. "That is--oh, nothing of any importance, you know. I--I
believe we were talking about socialism, and--and different classes of
people.... That sort of thing."

MacPherson, who had pushed unceremoniously into the room behind his
employer, nodded his gray head. "That would always be what he was
speaking of." He smiled a little as he said it.

"All right," returned Hardwick, struggling into his overcoat at the
hat-tree, and seeking his hat and stick, "I'll go right back with you,
Mac. This thing somehow has a sinister look to me."

As the two men were leaving the house, Hardwick felt a light, trembling
touch on his arm, and turned to face his sister-in-law.

"Why--Jerome, why did you say that last?"