“You don’t think it conceivable that Brenda...” he began gloomily.

“That Brenda what?”

“I was going to say...”

“Yes?” She leaned a little forward with an air of expectancy that disguised her definite refusal to end his sentences for him.

“It’s a most difficult situation, Miss Banks,” he said, starting a new line; “and we don’t in the least know what to make of it.  What on earth could induce Brenda to run off like this, with no apparent object?”

“But how do you know she really has?” asked Anne.  “You haven’t told me anything, yet, have you?  I mean, she may have gone out into the Park to get cool after the dance, or into the woods or anything.  Why should you imagine that she has—­run away?”

I joined in the conversation, then, for the first time.  I had not even been introduced to Anne.

“That’s very reasonable, surely, Jervaise,” I said.  “And wouldn’t it—­I hardly know her, I’ll admit—­but wouldn’t it be rather like your sister?”

So far as I was concerned, Anne’s suggestion carried conviction.  I was suddenly sure that our suspicions were all a mistake.

Jervaise snubbed me with a brief glance of profoundest contempt.  He probably intended that commentary on my interruption to go no further; but his confounded pose of superiority annoyed me to the pitch of exasperation.

“You see, my dear chap,” I continued quickly, “your unfortunate training as a lawyer invariably leads you to suspect a crime; and you overlook the obvious in your perfectly unreasonable and prejudiced search for the incriminating.”

Jervaise’s expression admirably conveyed his complete boredom with me and my speeches.

“You don’t know anything about it,” he said, with a short gesture of final dismissal.

“But, Mr. Jervaise,” Anne put in, “what can you possibly suspect, in this case?”

“He’d suspect anything of anybody for the sake of making a case of it,” I said, addressing Anne.  I wanted to make her look at me, but she kept her gaze fixed steadily on Jervaise, as if he were the controller of all destinies.

I accepted my dismissal, then, so far as to keep silence, but I was annoyed, now, with Anne, as well as with Jervaise.  “What on earth could she see in the fellow?” I asked myself irritably.  I was the more irritated because he had so obviously already forgotten my presence.

“Have you no reason to suspect anything yourself, Miss Banks?” he asked gravely.

“If you’re suggesting that Brenda and Arthur have run away together,” she said, “I’m perfectly, perfectly certain that you’re wrong, Mr. Jervaise.”

“Do you mean that you know for certain that they haven’t?” he returned.

She nodded confidently, and I thought she had perjured herself, until Jervaise with evident relief said, “I’m very glad of that; very.  Do you mind telling me how you know?”

“By intuition,” she said, without a trace of raillery in her face or her tone.