After dinner on that Saturday evening, Lois Drew had a long conversation with her cousin, James Daunt. She waited until he was seated in the most comfortable chair in the drawing-room with his cigar well under way, and then she spoke of the subject next her heart.
‘Tell me, Jimmy,’ she begged, ‘just what you really think. I want to understand exactly what we have to meet.’
reallyHe told her. Directly and without any attempt to gloss over the uglier facts, he told her all he knew. She listened in silence for the most part, but occasionally interjected shrewd, pertinent questions. Jimmy, who knew and respected his cousin’s intellect, yet marvelled at her grip, her power of letting go irrelevant details, and the unhesitating way in which she went straight to the essential heart of the vario
