With an odd sense of haste he rushed at
once to the attack.
Stepping in front of Hazen, he observed with force and unmistakable
resolution:
"Your devotion to the legatee Auchincloss cannot possibly be explained by
any ordinary feeling of obligation. Your sister has mentioned a Cause.
Can he by any possibility be the treasurer of that Cause?"
But Hazen was as impervious to direct attack as he had been to a covert
one.
"Georgian will tell you," said he. "When a woman looks as she looks now,
and is so given over to her own personal longings that she forgets the
most serious oaths, the most binding promises, nothing can hold back her
speech. She will talk, and since this must be, let her talk now and in
my presence. But let it be briefly," he admonished her, "and with
discretion. An unnecessary word will weigh heavily in the end. You know
in what scales. You shall have just fifteen minutes."
He looked about for a clock, but seeing none drew out his watch from his
vest pocket and laid it on the table. Then he settled himself again in
his chair, with a look and gesture of imperative command towards
Georgian.
Struck with dismay, she hesitated and he had time to add: "I shall not
interrupt unless you pass the bounds where narrative ends and disclosure
begins." And Harper and Ransom, glancing up at this, wondered at his
rigidity and the almost marble-like quiet into which his restless eye and
frenzied movements had now subsided.
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