Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/164

154 resolution, and, advancing towards her, said: "Do I see you alone, Miss Leavenworth?"

She paused in her hurried action, blushed and bowed, but, contrary to her usual custom, did not bid me enter.

"Will it be too great an intrusion on my part, if I venture to come in?" I asked.

Her glance flashed uneasily to the clock, and she seemed about to excuse herself, but suddenly yielded, and, drawing up a chair before the fire, motioned me towards it. Though she endeavored to appear calm, I vaguely felt I had chanced upon her in one of her most agitated moods, and that I had only to broach the subject I had in mind to behold her haughtiness disappear before me like melting snow. I also felt that I had but few moments in which to do it. I accordingly plunged immediately into the subject.

"Miss Leavenworth," said I, "in obtruding upon you to-night, I have a purpose other than that of giving myself a pleasure. I have come to make an appeal."

Instantly I saw that in some way I had started wrong. "An appeal to make to me?" she asked, breathing coldness from every feature of her face.

"Yes," I went on, with passionate recklessness. "Balked in every other endeavor to learn the truth, I have come to you, whom I believe to be noble at the core, for that help which seems likely to fail us in every other direction: for the word which, if it does not absolutely save your cousin, will at least put us upon the track of what will."

"I do not understand what you mean," she protested, slightly shrinking.

"Miss Leavenworth," I pursued, "it is needless for me to tell you in what position your cousin stands. You, who remember both the form and drift of the