“I don’t think you would do that,” she said.  “But, if you will let me say so, yours must be a very trying life, and also an extremely dangerous one.  I am afraid you must look upon human nature from a very strange point of view!”

“Not more strange probably than you do,” I answered.

“But you are continually seeing the saddest side of it.  To you all the miseries that a life of crime entails, are visible.  The greater part of your time is spent among desperate men who are without hope, and to whom even their own shadows are a constant menace.  I wonder that you still manage to retain your kind heart.”

“But how do you know that my heart is kind?” I inquired.

“If for no other reason, simply because you have taken up my uncle’s case,” she answered.  “Do you think when he was so rude to you just now, that I could not see that you pitied him, and for that reason you forbore to take advantage of your power?  I know you have a kind heart.”

“And you find it difficult to assimilate that kind heart with the remorseless detective of Public Life?”

“I find it difficult to recognize in you the man who, on a certain notable occasion, went into a thieves’ den in Chicago unaccompanied, and after a terrible struggle in which you nearly lost your life, succeeded in effecting the arrest of a notorious murderer.”

At that moment the gong in the hall sounded for lunch, and I was by no means sorry for the interruption.  We found Kitwater and Codd awaiting our coming in the dining-room, and we thereupon sat down to the meal.  When we left the room again, we sat in the garden and smoked, and later in the afternoon, my hostess conducted me over her estate, showed me her vineries, introduced me to her two sleek Jerseys, who had their home in the meadow I had seen from the window; to her poultry, pigs, and the pigeons who came fluttering about her, confident that they would come to no harm.  Meanwhile her uncle had resumed his restless pacing up and down the path on which I had first seen him, Codd had returned to his archaeological studies, and I was alone with Miss Kitwater.  We were standing alone together, I remember, at the gate that separated the garden from the meadowland.  I knew as well as possible, indeed I had known it since we had met in the churchyard that morning, that she had something to say to me, something concerning which she had not quite made up her mind.  What it was, however, I fancied I could hazard a very good guess, but I was determined not to forestall her, but to wait and let her broach it to me in her own way.  This, I fancied, she was now about to do.

“Mr. Fairfax,” she began, resting her clasped hands upon the bar of the gate as she spoke, “I want, if you will allow me, to have a serious talk with you.  I could not have a better opportunity than the present, and, such as it is, I want to make the best of it.”

“I am quite at your service, Miss Kitwater,” I replied, “and if I can be of any use to you I hope you will tell me.  Pray let me know what I can do for you?”