she had once lost courage here in the gay hotel dining room overlooking the lighted, thronged boulevard, she might weaken again; so she plunged into facts, not at all as she had planned, but so as to commit her to the telling through to the end.
"Killed a man?" her cousin was repeating in a whisper, looking about swiftly and then bending further across the table. "You mean accidentally?"
"No; no, I don't think Ben."
"Then what do you mean?"
"He killed him; killed him, I think."
"You mean—murdered him?"
"Oh, Ben, I don't know; but I'm afraid so!"
"Miss Platt's husband murdered—killed some one!" Bennet repeated, himself now refusing the word he had tried to force from Ethel.
His incredulity was expressed in a manner so like that which his grandfather had feigned that Ethel jerked in a spasm of recollection of the struggle at St. Florentin.
"Yes, Ben," she said.
"Good Lord, he did; why?"
"I don't know."
"Who'd he kill—an Indian?"
"No; I don't know."
"What do you know then?" Bennet demanded irritably, but he still was whispering cautiously, and he glanced frequently about to make sure that no one was near enough to overhear. "You said you came back here because—that is, your trouble with grandfather was over a man Kincheloe killed. How'd that send you back or get you in wrong with grandfather?"
"Because grandfather was in it too, Ben."
