Still there came no movement from the other room.
If Miss Tita was sleeping she was sleeping sound. Was she doing so--
generous creature--on purpose to leave me the field? Did she know
I was there and was she just keeping quiet to see what I would do--
what I COULD do? But what could I do, when it came to that?
She herself knew even better than I how little.
I stopped in front of the secretary, looking at it
very idiotically; for what had it to say to me after all?
In the first place it was locked, and in the second it
almost surely contained nothing in which I was interested.
Ten to one the papers had been destroyed; and even if they
had not been destroyed the old woman would not have put them
in such a place as that after removing them from the green trunk--
would not have transferred them, if she had the idea of their
safety on her brain, from the better hiding place to the worse.
The secretary was more conspicuous, more accessible
in a room in which she could no longer mount guard.
It opened with a key, but there was a little brass handle,
like a button, as well; I saw this as I played my lamp over it.
I did something more than this at that moment:
I caught a glimpse of the possibility that Miss Tita wished me
really to understand. If she did not wish me to understand,
if she wished me to keep away, why had she not locked the door
of communication between the sitting room and the sala? That
would have been a definite sign that I was to leave them alone.
Pages:
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127