"Tell me about it, little girl; what have you heard?" he asked.
She hesitated. "It wasn't true what they said. I knew it wasn't true, but they had no right to say it."
"Well, let's hear it, anyway. What was it?"
"Some people were here last night from New Orleans; they asked if I knew you—said they knew you and Dick the year you spent there."
"Well?" said Redding.
Lucy evidently found it difficult to continue. "They said some horrid things then, just because you were Dick's friend."
"What were they, Lucy?"
"They told me that you were both as wild as could be; that your reputation was no better than his; that—forgive me, Robert, for even repeating it. It made me very angry, and I told them it was not true—not a word of it; that it was all Dick's fault; that he—"
"Lucy," interrupted Redding, peremptorily, "wait until you hear me! I have never lied to you about anything, and I will not stoop to it now. Four years ago, when those people knew me, I was just what they said. Dick Harris and I went to New Orleans straight from college. Neither of us had a home or people to care about us, so we went in for a good time. At the end of the year I was sick of it all, braced up, and came here. Poor Dick, he kept on."
At his first words the color had left Lucy's face, and she had slipped to the opposite side of the fire, and stood watching him with horrified eyes.