'Kenyon is one, I know; who is the other?'
'Miss Brewster, I will tell you nothing.'
'But you have told me something already. Please go on and talk, Mr.
Wentworth--about anything you like--and I shall soon find out all I want
to know about the mine.'
She paused, but Wentworth remained silent, which, indeed, the bewildered
young man realized was the only safe thing to do.
'They speak of the talkativeness of women,' Miss Brewster went on, as if
soliloquizing, 'but it is nothing to that of the men. Once set a man
talking, and you learn everything he knows--besides ever so much more
that he doesn't.'
Miss Brewster had abandoned her very taking attitude, with its suggestion
of confidential relations, and had removed her elbows from the table,
sitting now back in her chair, gazing dreamily at the dingy window which
let the light in from the dingy court. She seemed to have forgotten that
Wentworth was there, and said, more to herself than to him:
'I wonder if Kenyon would tell me about the mine.'
'You might ask him.'
'No; it wouldn't do any good,' she continued, gently shaking her head.
'He's one of your silent men, and there are so few of them in this
world. Perhaps I had better go to William Longworth himself; he's not
suspicious of me.'
As she said this, she threw a quick glance at Wentworth, and the
unfortunate young man's face at once told her that she had hit the mark.
She bent her head over the table, and laughed with such evident enjoyment
that Wentworth, in spite of his helpless anger, smiled grimly.
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