"God knows how much wrong there is. I'm going to tell you all I know.
We're all in this,--through Kenyon, and because we've been thoughtless
fools running amuck through life."
The idea of there being anything wrong with Peter brought Belle quickly
out of self-analysis and the self-indulgence of her own pain. "Don't
beat about the bush," she said. "Please tell me. You told mother this
morning that he had stayed with Nicholas last night."
"That was a lie. This is what happened. After a rotten day worrying
about an upset with Betty, he went to see Kenyon late last night. He'd
had nothing to eat. I believe because Kenyon had been disappointed about
something earlier in the evening,--but I only make a guess at that from
the way he looked when I saw him to-day,--he deliberately took it out on
Peter."
"On Peter? How?" Belle understood this disappointment only too well.
"He made him drunk."
"Drunk!--Peter!"
"Dead drunk,--by doping him with a fearful mixture of all the drinks he
had. He had always threatened to do it, and this time he caught Peter
napping. That was a foul enough thing to do anyway, but it didn't
satisfy him. He got him into the street and instead of putting him into
a cab and sending him home he called a passing woman----"
"Oh, no!" cried Belle.
"Yes,--and gave Peter over to her and there he's been, in her bed, in a
little hole of an apartment, ill and poisoned, ever since."
"Oh, my God!" cried Belle.
"The woman rang me up early this morning and I got Ralph Harding to go
and see what he could do. I've been there most of the day,--except for
ten minutes with Kenyon--the best ten minutes I ever put in--ever."
He got up and stood looking at Belle with a gleam of such intense
satisfaction in his eyes that she guessed what he had done.
"That's our admirable friend Kenyon," he added. "That's the man who
shared rooms with Peter--whose charm of manner got us all at Oxford, and
who was made one of the family by father and mother when he came to this
country. I hit him for Peter, for you and for myself in that glorious
ten minutes to-day. I left him lying on the floor in his rooms all over
his own black blood, and if ever I meet him again, in any part of the
world, at any time of my life, I'll give him another dose of the same
sort--for Peter, for you and for me--That's what I came to tell you,
Bee."
He bent forward and kissed her, turned round and left the room.
That was Kenyon, Graham had said.
Standing where he had left her, with this story of utter and incredible
treachery in her ears, Belle added another count to Graham's
indictment,--that of trying to seduce her without even the promise of
marriage, when her grief at parting with him made her weak.
For a moment she stood chilled and stunned. That was Kenyon--All along
she had been fooled--all along he had been playing with her as though
she amounted merely to a light creature with whom men passed the time.
It was due to her father,--of all men, her father,--that she stood there
that night, humiliated but unharmed, with her pride all slashed and
bleeding, her self-respect at a discount, but with nothing on her
conscience that would make her face the passing days with fear and
horror.
She suddenly flamed into action. "Yes; that's Kenyon!" she thought, and
making a sort of blazing pounce on the middle drawer of her
dressing-table she pulled it open, took out the large photograph of a
man in hunting-kit, and with queer, choking cries of rage and scorn,
tore it into shreds and stamped upon the pieces.