He found Portia alone, for which he was glad; but her greeting was distinctly accusative.

“If I should pretend to be deeply offended and tell Thomas to show you the door, what could you say for yourself?” she began, before he could say a word in exculpation.

“I should say every sort of excuseful thing I could think of, knowing very well that the most ingenious lie would fall far short of atoning for the offense,” he replied humbly.

“Possibly it would be better to tell the truth—­had you thought of that?” she suggested, quite without malice.

“Yes, I had; and I shall, if you’ll let me begin back a bit.”  He drew up a chair to face her and sat on the edge of it.  “You know I told you I was going to Gaston to sell my six lots while Major Guilford’s little boom is on?”

“I’m trying to remember:  go on.”

“Well, I went yesterday morning and returned late last night.  Do you know, it’s positively marvelous!”

“Which—­the six lots, the boom, or the celerity of your movements?” she asked, with a simulation of the deepest interest.

“All three, if you please; but I meant the miraculous revival of things along the Trans-Western.  But that is neither here nor there—­”

“I think it is very much here and there,” she interrupted.

“I see you don’t want me to tell the truth—­the whole truth; but I am determined.  The first man I met after dinner was Hunnicott, and when I had made him my broker in the real estate affair we fell to talking about the railroad steal.  Speaking of MacFarlane’s continued absence, Hunnicott said, jokingly, that it was a pity we couldn’t go back to the methods of a few hundred years ago and hire the Hot Springs doctor to ‘obliterate’ him.  The word stuck in my mind, and I broke away and took the train chiefly to have a chance to think out the new line.  In the smoking-room of the sleeper I found—­whom, do you suppose?”

“Oh, I don’t know:  Judge MacFarlane, perhaps, coming back to give you a chance to poison him at short range?”

“No; it was Marston.”

“And he talked so long and so fast that you couldn’t get here in time for dinner this evening?  That would be the most picturesque of the little fictions you spoke of.”

Kent laughed.

“For the first hour he wouldn’t talk at all; just sat there wooden-faced, smoking vile little cigars that made me think I was getting hay-fever.  But I wouldn’t give up; and after I had worn out all the commonplaces I began on the Trans-Western muddle.  At that he woke up all at once, and before I knew it he was giving me an expert legal opinion on the case; meaty and sound and judicial.  Miss Van Brock, that man is a lawyer, and an exceedingly able one, at that.”

“Of course,” she said coolly.  “He was one of the justices of the Supreme Court of his own state at forty-two:  that was before he had to come West for his health.  I found that out a long time ago.”