the trouble."

Miss Macroyd laughed the more; then she purposely darkened her
countenance so as to suit it to her lugubrious whisper, "How did she get
here?"

"What she?"

"The mysterious fugitive. Wasn't she coming here, after all?"

"After all your trouble in supposing so?" Verrian reflected a moment,
and then he said, deliberately, "I don't know."

Miss Macroyd was not going to let him off like that. "You don't know how
she came, or you don't know whether she was coming?"

"I didn't say."

Her laugh resounded again. "Now you are trying to be wicked, and that is
very wrong for a novelist."

"But what object could I have in concealing the fact from you, Miss
Macroyd?" he entreated, with mock earnestness.

"That is what I want to find out."

"What are you two laughing so about?" the voice of Mrs. Westangle
twittered at Verrian's elbow, and, looking down, he found her almost
touching it. She had a very long, narrow neck, and, since it was long
and narrow, she had the good sense not to palliate the fact or try to