“I’m dying for my tea, you know; and here’s a letter for you,” he said.

She took the letter he held out in exchange for the cup she proffered him, and, returning to her seat, broke the seal with the languid gesture of the reader whose interests are all inclosed in the circle of one cherished presence.

Her next conscious motion was that of starting to her feet, the letter falling to them as she rose, while she held out to her husband a long newspaper clipping.

“Ned!  What’s this?  What does it mean?”

He had risen at the same instant, almost as if hearing her cry before she uttered it; and for a perceptible space of time he and she studied each other, like adversaries watching for an advantage, across the space between her chair and his desk.

“What’s what?  You fairly made me jump!” Boyne said at length, moving toward her with a sudden, half-exasperated laugh.  The shadow of apprehension was on his face again, not now a look of fixed foreboding, but a shifting vigilance of lips and eyes that gave her the sense of his feeling himself invisibly surrounded.

Her hand shook so that she could hardly give him the clipping.

“This article—­from the ’Waukesha Sentinel’—­that a man named Elwell has brought suit against you—­that there was something wrong about the Blue Star Mine.  I can’t understand more than half.”

They continued to face each other as she spoke, and to her astonishment, she saw that her words had the almost immediate effect of dissipating the strained watchfulness of his look.

“Oh, that!” He glanced down the printed slip, and then folded it with the gesture of one who handles something harmless and familiar.  “What’s the matter with you this afternoon, Mary?  I thought you’d got bad news.”

She stood before him with her undefinable terror subsiding slowly under the reassuring touch of his composure.

“You knew about this, then—­it’s all right?”

“Certainly I knew about it; and it’s all right.”

“But what is it?  I don’t understand.  What does this man accuse you of?”

“Oh, pretty nearly every crime in the calendar.”  Boyne had tossed the clipping down, and thrown himself comfortably into an arm-chair near the fire.  “Do you want to hear the story?  It’s not particularly interesting—­just a squabble over interests in the Blue Star.”

“But who is this Elwell?  I don’t know the name.”

“Oh, he’s a fellow I put into it—­gave him a hand up.  I told you all about him at the time.”

“I daresay.  I must have forgotten.”  Vainly she strained back among her memories.  “But if you helped him, why does he make this return?”

“Oh, probably some shyster lawyer got hold of him and talked him over.  It’s all rather technical and complicated.  I thought that kind of thing bored you.”