“Stop lying!” said Zizi sternly, “she’s doing that, Pen, because the man she saw has ordered her to.”
“No, he hasn’t,” Molly declared, but Zizi said:
“Yes, he has, and what’s more, he has bribed you by——”
Zizi’s penetrating glance overcame Molly’s boldness and she trembled in silence as Zizi said, “by marriage!”
Even Wise looked up in amazement; “What do you mean, Zizi?”
“Just what I say. Molly is wearing a very bright, new wedding ring. She didn’t have it yesterday. Molly knows the truth we’re looking for, and she won’t tell because it implicates a man who has married her to keep her quiet! Is it Bob Moore, Molly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the girl, in a low tone, and with a very apparent look of relief.
“Then it isn’t,” said Zizi triumphantly; “I know by the way you speak! Who is it?”
“It isn’t anybody,” Molly said, but she said it with a furtive glance at their faces in turn; with a hesitating air of uncertainty as to what course to take; with a futile attempt at her old impudent manner. “I’m not really married; lots of us girls wear a wedding ring to fool people.”
“Rubbish!” said Zizi, contemptuously. “There’s no sense in that! You are married,—or, you think you are—aha, I thought so!”