Mr. Broderick regarded her with admiration. He distrusted her more every moment, but he had realised at once that he had no ordinary woman to deal with, and he rejoiced in the clash of wits. The other young men were sitting forward, almost breathless, and Mrs. Balfame was now fully alive to the danger of her position. But all sensation of fear had left her. All the iron in her nature fused in the crucible of those terrible moments and came forth finely tempered steel. [Pg 111] [Pg 111] "Anything more?" "Oh—ah—yes. Would you mind telling us what you did after you had packed the suitcase and brought it downstairs?" "I went up to my room and began to undress for bed." "But that must have been quite fifteen minutes before Mr. Balfame's return. He walked from Cummack's house, which is about a mile from here. It was noticed that you merely had taken your dress off. Would you not have had time to get into bed?" "If I were a man. But I had my hair to brush—with fifty strokes; and—a little nightly massage, if you will have it. Besides, I had intended to go down and lock the front door after my husband had left." "Ah!" The admiration of the young men mounted higher. They disliked her coldly, if only for that lack of sex-magnetism, which men, particularly young men, naïve in their extensive surface psychology, take as a personal affront. They did not believe a word she said, and they did not give her and her possible fate a throb of sympathy, but they generously pronounced her "a wonder." Mr. Broderick took a chance shot. "And did you not during that time look out of the window—toward the grove?" Mrs. Balfame hesitated the fraction of a minute, then wisely returned to her know-nothing policy. "Why should I? Certainly not. I heard no sound out there. I am not in the habit of examining the grounds from my window at night. It is enough to go through the lower rooms before I lock up." [Pg 112] [Pg 112] "But your window was dark when the men ran over from Gifning's after hearing the shot. They remember that. Do you brush your hair—and—and massage in the dark?" Mrs. Balfame sat back in her chair with the
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