, exactly because of it--she understood that he
had formed his own impression of the relation between Henry and herself
and that, consequently, he was not likely to say anything more like
this.

They had walked east, across the damp, dead turf to where the Drive
leaves the shore and is built out into the lake; as they crossed to it
on the smooth ice of the lagoon between, he took her arm to steady her.

"There is something I have been wanting to ask you," she said.

"Yes."

"That night when you were hurt--it was for robbery, they said. What do
you think about it?" She watched him as he looked at her and then
away; but his face was completely expressionless.

"The proceedings were a little too rapid for me to judge, Miss
Sherrill."

"But there was no demand upon you to give over your money before you
were attacked?"

"No."

She breathed a little more quickly. "It must be a strange sensation,"
she observed, "to know that some one has tried to kill you."

"It must, indeed."

"You mean you don't think that he tried to kill you?"

"The police captain thinks not; he says it was the work of a man new to
the blackjack, and he hit harder and oftener than he needed. He says
that sort are the dangerous ones--that one's quite safe in the hands of
an experienced slugger, as you would be with the skilful man in any
line. I never thought of it that way before. He almost made it into
an argument for leaving the trained artists loose on the streets, for
the safety of the public, instead of turning the business over to boys
only half educated."

"What do you think about the man yourself?" Constance persisted.

"The apprentice who practiced on me?"

She waited, watching his eyes. "I was hardly in a condition, Miss
Sherrill, to appreciate anything about the man at all. Why do you ask?"

"Because--" She hesitated an instant, "if you were attacked to be
killed, it meant that you must have been attacked as the son of--Mr.
Corvet. Then that meant--at least it implied, that Mr. Corvet was
killed, that he did not go away. You see that, of course."

"Were you the only one who thought that? Or did some one speak to you
about it?"

"No one did; I spoke to father. He thought--"

"Yes."

"Well, if Mr. Corvet was murdered--I'm following what father thought,
you understand--it involved something a good deal worse perhaps than
anything that could have been involved if he had only gone away. The
facts we had made i