“Thank you.  I am sure you can.  Let us all sit down, for we must have quite a talk.  Dr. Hinman tells me that I shall need a lawyer.”

“Undoubtedly,” I assented.  “Your father’s estate will have to be settled, and that can only be done in the courts.  Besides, in the eyes of the law, you are still a minor.”

“Will you be my lawyer, Mr. Lester?”

“It will be a great privilege,” I answered.

“Then we will consider that settled?”

“Yes,” I agreed, “we will consider that settled.”

“But it is not business I wish to discuss to-day,” she went on, quickly.  “There are other things more urgent.  First, I wish to get acquainted with you.  Have you not wondered, Mr. Lester, why it was that I chose you to deliver my letter?”

“I suppose it was because there was no one else,” I answered, looking at her in some astonishment for the way she was rattling on.  The colour was coming and going in her cheeks and her eyes were very bright.  I wondered if she had escaped brain fever, after all.

“No,” she said, smiling audaciously, “it was because I liked your face—­I knew you could be trusted.  Of course, for a moment I was startled at seeing you looking down at me from a tree.  I wondered afterwards how you came to be there.”

“Just idle curiosity,” I managed to stammer, my face very hot.  “I am sorry if I annoyed you.”

“Oh, but it was most fortunate,” she protested; “and a great coincidence, too, that you should be Mr. Swain’s employer, and able to get hold of him at once.”

“It didn’t do much good,” I said, gloomily; “and it has ended in putting Swain in jail.”

I happened to glance at her hands, folded in her lap, and saw that they were fairly biting into each other.

“In jail!” she whispered, and now there was no colour in her face.

“Forgive me, Miss Vaughan,” I said, hastily.  “That was brutal.  I forgot you didn’t know.”

“Tell me!” she panted.  “Tell me!  I can stand it!  Oh, you foolish man, didn’t you see—­I was trying to nerve myself—­I was trying to find out....”

I caught the hands that were bruising themselves against each other and held them fast.

“Miss Vaughan,” I said, “listen to me and believe that I am telling you the whole truth.  The coroner’s jury returned a verdict that Swain was guilty of your father’s death.  As the result of that verdict, he has been taken to the Tombs.  But the last words he said to me before the officers took him away were that he was innocent, and that he had no fear.”

“Surely,” she assented, eagerly, “he should have no fear.  But to think of him in prison—­it tears my heart!”

“Don’t think of it that way!” I protested.  “He is bearing it bravely—­when I saw him last, he was smiling.”

“But the stain—­the disgrace.”

“There will be none; he shall be freed without stain—­I will see to that.”