ou'd produce evidence
on which an arrest would be made. I've intelligence enough to see that
the public's interest in you is so great, the sympathy for you is so
great, that your threats--I mean, predictions, or opinions--colour
everything that's written by the reporters. You see?"

"Do I see what?"

Despite her excellent pose of waiting with nothing more than a polite
interest, Lucille saw in her a pronounced alteration. That was not so
much in her face as in her body. Her limbs had a look of rigidity.

"Don't you see what I mean?" Lucille insisted. "I see that you can make
endless trouble for us--for all of us at Sloanehurst. You can make
people believe Mr. Webster guilty, and that father and I are shielding
him. People listen to what you say. They seem to be on your side."

"Well?"

"I wondered if you wouldn't stop your interviews--your accusations?"

The younger woman's eagerness, evident now in the variety of her
gestures and the rapid procession of pallour and flush across her
cheeks, persuaded Mrs. Brace that Lucille was acting on an impulse of
her own, not as an agent to carry out another's well designed scheme.
The older woman, at that idea, felt safe. She asked:

"And you want--what?"

"I've come here to ask you to tell me all you know, or to be quiet
altogether."

"I'm afraid I don't understand--fully," returned Mrs. Brace, with an
exaggerated bewilderment. "Tell all I know?"

"That is, if you do know anything you haven't told!" Lucille urged her.
"Oh, don't you see? I'm saying to you that I want to put an end to this
dreadful suspense!"

Mrs. Brace laughed disagreeably; her face was harder, less human. "You
mean I'm amusing myself, exerting myself needlessly, as a matter of
spite? Do you mean to tell me that?"

"No! No!" Lucille denied, impatient with herself for lack of clearness.
"I mean I'm sure you're attacking an innocent man. And I'm willing, I'm
anxious--oh, I hope so much, Mrs. Brace--to make an agreement with
you--a financial arrangement----" She paused the fractional part of a
second on that; and, seeing that the other did not resent the term, she
added: "to pay you to stop it. Isn't that clear?"

"Yes; that's clear."

"Understand me, please. What I ask is that you say nothing more to the
reporters, the sheriff or the Washington police, that will have the
effect of hounding them on against Mr. Webster. I want to eliminate from
the situation all the influence you've exerted to make