Pagina 223 van 439

"It was the surest way to disarm any suspicion they might have

had. One of them had just said the man they wanted was like me.

Presently, one would have been guessing that it was me." He

looked at her drolly, and added: "You played up to me fine, sis."

A touch of deeper color beat into her dusky cheeks. "We'll drop

the relationship right now, if you please. I said only what you

made me say," she told him, a little stiffly.

But presently she relaxed to the note of friendliness, even of

comradeship, habitual to her. She was a singularly frank

creature, having been brought up in a country where women were

few and far, and where conventions were of the simplest.

Otherwise, she would not have confessed to him with unconscious

naivete, as she now did, how greatly she had been troubled for

him before she received the note from Speed.