Her tone seemed suddenly to put us nearer together than we had ever been
at all. "Dear no," I laughed--"not each other; only with each other's
help, a few of our good friends."
"A few?" She handsomely demurred. "But one or two at the best."
"Or at the worst!"--I continued to laugh. "And not even those, it after
all appears, very much!"
She didn't like my laughter, but she was now grandly indulgent. "Well, I
accuse no one."
I was silent a little; then I concurred. "It's doubtless your best line;
and I really quite feel, at all events, that when you mentioned a while
since that I talk too much you only meant too much to _you_."
"Yes--I wasn't imputing to you the same direct appeal. I didn't
suppose," she explained, "that--to match your own supposition of
_me_--you had resorted to May herself."
"You didn't suppose I had asked her?" The point was positively that she
didn't; yet it made us look at each other almost as hard as if she did.
"No, of course you couldn't have supposed anything so cruel--all the
more that, as you knew, I had not admitted the possibility."
She accepted my assent; but, oddly enough, with a sudden qualification
that showed her as still sharply disposed to make use of any loose scrap
of her embarrassed acuteness. "Of course, at the same time, you yourself
saw that your not admitting the possibility would have taken the edge
from your cruelty. It's not the innocent," she suggestively remarked,
"that we fear to frighten."
"Oh," I returned, "I fear, mostly, I think, to frighten _any_ one. I'm
not particularly brave. I haven't, at all events, in spite of my
certitude, interrogated Mrs. Server, and I give you my word of honour
that I've not had any denial from her to prop up my doubt. It still
stands on its own feet, and it was its own battle that, when I came here
at your summons, it was prepared to fight. Let me accordingly remind
you," I pursued, "in connection with that, of the one sense in which you
were, as you a moment ago said, talked over by me. I persuaded you
apparently that Long's metamorphosis was not the work of Lady John. I
persuaded you of nothing else."
She looked down a little, as if again at a trap. "You persuaded me that
it was the work of somebody." Then she held up her head. "It came to the
same thing."
If I had credit then for my trap it at least might serve. "The same
thing as what?"
"Why, as claiming that it _was_ she."
"Poor May--'claiming'? When I insisted it wasn't!"