Ransom was silent.

“Anitra’s hat is below and here is Mrs. Ransom’s.  She who escaped from this house last night went out bare-headed,” repeated the lawyer.

Mr. Ransom, moving aside to avoid the probing of the other’s eye, merely remarked: 

“You noticed my wife’s dress very particularly it seems.  It was of serge, you say.”

“Yes.  I am learned in stuffs.  I remarked it when she got into the coach, possibly because I was struck by its simplicity and conventional make.  There was no trimming on the bottom, only stitching.  Her sister’s was just like it.  They had the look of being ready-made.”

“But Anitra had no rain-coat.  I remember that her shoulders were wet when she came in from the lane.”

“No, she had no protection but her blouse, black like her dress.  I presume that her hot blood resented every kind of wrap.”

Again that sidelong glance from his keen eye.  “She wore a checked silk handkerchief about her neck—­the one she afterwards put over her head.”

“You were on the same train with my wife and sister-in-law,” Ransom now said.  “Did you sit near them?  Converse with them, that is, with Mrs. Ransom?”

“I have no reason for deceiving you in that regard,” replied Mr. Harper.  “I did not come up from New York on the same train they did.  They must have come up in the morning, for when I arrived at the place they call the Ferry, I saw them standing on the hotel steps ready to step into the coach.  I spoke to Mrs. Ransom then, but only a word.  My grip-sack had been put under the driver’s seat, and I saw that I was expected to ride with him, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather.  Mrs. Ransom saw it too and possibly my natural hesitation, for she turned to me after she had seen her sister safely ensconced inside, and said something about her regret at having subjected me to such inconvenience, but did not offer to make room for me in the body of the coach, though there was room enough if the other had been the quiet lady she was herself.  But she was not, and possibly this was Mrs. Ransom’s excuse for her apparent lack of consideration for me.  Before we reached the point where the lane cuts in, I became aware of some disturbance behind me, and when we really got there, I heard first the coach door opening, then your wife’s voice, raised in entreaty to the driver, calling on him to stop before her sister jumped out and hurt herself.  ‘She is deaf and very wild’ was all the explanation she gave after Miss Hazen had leaped into the wet road and darted from sight into what looked to me, in the darkness, like a tangled mass of bushes.  Then she said something about her having had hard work to keep her still till we got this far; but that she was sure she would find her way to the hotel, and that we mustn’t bother ourselves about it for she wasn’t going to; Anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children.  That is all I have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel.  I think it right for me to clear the slate, Ransom.  Who knows what we may wish to write upon it next?”