"What a waste of good moonlight!" he exclaimed, with smiling sympathy. "Why aren't you youngsters out on the lawn?"
"It's all your fault," responded Leo. "We've been absorbing one of the books you sent up."
"Have you? It must have been a wonderful romance. I can't conceive of anything but a love-story keeping youth indoors on a night like this."
Victor defended her. "We've been reading of Morselli's wonderful experiments. It's in Italian, and Miss Wood has been translating it for me."
"What luck you have!" exclaimed Mr. Bartol. "I engage her to re-translate it for me at the same rate."
Mrs. Ollnee and Mrs. Joyce came in as he was speaking, and Mrs. Joyce, after disposing herself comfortably, said, "Well, what is your report?"
He confessed that he had been too busy with other matters to give the Aiken accusation much thought. "However, I sent an armful of books out to my assistant attorney." He waved his hand toward Victor.
"You don't mean to read books," protested Mrs. Joyce, energetically, "when you've the very source of all knowledge right here in your own house? Why don't you study your client and convince yourself of her powers?--then you'll know what to do and say."
"I had thought of that," he said, hesitantly. "But--"
"You need not fear," Mrs. Joyce assured him. "It's true Lucy cannot always furnish the phenomena on the instant. In fact, the more eager she is the more reluctant the forces are; but you can at least try, and she is not only willing but eager for the test."
Bartol turned to Mrs. Ollnee. "Are you prepared now--to-night?" he asked.
Mrs. Joyce exulted. "The power is on her. I can see that. See how her hand trembles! One finger is signaling. Don't you see it?"
Mr. Bartol rose. "Come with me into my study. Mrs. Joyce may come some other time. I do not want any witnesses to-night," he added, with a smile.
Victor watched his mother go into Bartol's study with something of the feeling he might have had in seeing her enter the den of a lion. She seemed very helpless and very inexperienced in contrast with this great inquisitor, so skilled in cross-examination, so inexorable in logic, so menacing of eye.
Leo, perceiving Victor's anxiety, proposed that they return to the porch, and to this he acceded, though it seemed like a cowardly desertion of his mother. "Poor little mother," he said. "If she stands up against him she's a wonder."