Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/333

 which, she understood well enough was, with the darkness, the only condition on which he could go on speaking.

"Hell, wasn't it?" he said briefly before continuing. "I didn't know anything about French inquests, but I could make a guess they would take care to make this one as uncomfortable for Flora as they could. Sounded like a good chance for blackmail too. So I telegraphed back to the house that I'd be back on the next train. I found out afterwards that Marise had wired me, but I never got her telegram. Then before the train started, I beat it to the office of a French lawyer in Bordeaux, and found out all I wanted to about French inquests. I found out then, that there wasn't any real danger, that they couldn't do a thing except talk about it. But, Heavens! their talk was apt to be a-plenty. It was up to me to get back and look out for Flora. Poor Floral You know she had no more harm in her than a kitten."

Cousin Hetty felt a long, rigorous tremor rim through her, partly the cold of the mountain evening, partly an inner chill.

"Poor Flora!" she said now in a trembling voice. It was the only word she spoke, the only comment she made on what he had told her, on what he was to tell her.

"Well, when my train pulled into Bayonne the next morning, there was Marise to meet me, and great Scott! she almost scared the life out of me, crying and hanging on to me. I didn't know what had happened, besides what was in the paper, what she had heard! But in a minute, she got over that enough to tell me what she thought the matter was … her mother all shaken up from the nervous shock of seeing somebody killed, all upset, gone to a convent for a rest-cure. Lots of folks do that in France, instead of going to a hospital or sanitarium, as they do here. I didn't think from the way she spoke she even knew who it was who had been killed. You'd better believe I didn't say anything about who it was, either! I wanted to go easy and find out how things were. I kept my ears and eyes open: but I didn't get anything that would give me a lead from Marise, except that I found that her music-teacher had piled right in and Stayed by her till I got there. And I was pretty sure she