"What's what? You fairly made me jump!" Boyne said at length,
moving toward her with a sudden, half-exasperated laugh. The
shadow of apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of
fixed foreboding, but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that
gave her the sense of his feeling himself invisibly surrounded.

Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping.

"This article--from the 'Waukesha Sentinel'--that a man named
Elwell has brought suit against you--that there was something
wrong about the Blue Star Mine. I can't understand more than
half."

They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her
astonishment, she saw that her words had the almost immediate
effect of dissipating the strained watchfulness of his look.

"Oh, THAT!" He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it
with the gesture of one who handles something harmless and
familiar. "What's the matter with you this afternoon, Mary? I
thought you'd got bad news."

She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly
under the reassuring touch of his composure.

"You knew about this, then--it's all right?"

"Certainly I knew about it; and it's all right."

"But what IS it? I don't understand. What does this man accuse