d indifference.

"Why didn't you sleep in the house last night?" he asked.

I took time to consider my answer; I was taken aback by his knowledge of
the fact he had disclosed. My first impulse was to retort "How do you know
that I didn't sleep in the house?" but I was determined to be very
cautious at the outset of this cross-examination. Obviously he meant it to
take the form of a cross-examination. I was equally determined that I
would presently reverse the parts of counsel and witness--or was I the
prisoner giving evidence on my own behalf?

We must have gone another fifteen or twenty deliberate paces before I
replied,--

"I'll answer that question in a minute. I should like to know first what
grounds you have for stating that I didn't sleep in the house?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "You admit that you didn't?" he retorted.

"If you're going to conduct your conversation on the principles of the
court room," I said, "the only thing I can do is to adopt the same
method."

He ignored that. "You admit that you didn't sleep in the house?" he
repeated.

"I'll admit nothing until I know what the devil you're driving at," I
replied.

He did not look at me. He was saving himself until he reached the
brow-beating stage. But I was watching him--we were walking a yard or two
apart--and I noted his expression of simulated indifference and
forbearance, as he condescendingly admitted my claim to demand evidence
for his preliminary accusation.

"You were very late coming down," he began and paused, probably to tempt
me into some ridicule of such a worthless piece of testimony.

"Go on," I said.

"You were seen coming into the house after eight o'clock in the morning,"
he continued, paused again and then, as I kept silence, added, "In evening
dress."

"Is that all?" I asked.

It was not. He had kept the decisive accusation until the end.

"Your bed had not been slept in," he concluded wearily, as if to say, "My
good idiot, why persist in this damning assumption of innocence?"

"You've been examining the servants, I see," I remarked.

He was not to be drawn by such an ingenuous sneer as that. "The
housekeeper told the mater when she came back from church," he said. "I
suppose the thing came up in some arrangement of household affairs."

"Very likely," I agreed; "but why did your mother tell _you_?"

I saw at once that he meant to evade that question if possible. For some
reason Miss Tattersall was to be kept o