"Mr. Hatton and Mr. McLean."
"Mr. McLean! Oh, the shame of it!" Miss Forrest paced rapidly up and down the parlor floor, her eyes flashing, her cheeks flushed, her hands nervously twisting the filmy handkerchief she carried. Her excitement was something utterly foreign to her, and neither Miller nor his wife could understand it. Suddenly, as though by uncontrollable impulse, she stopped before and faced them.
"Major Miller!" she exclaimed, "I must tell you something. I had made up my mind to do it yesterday. It will not add to my faint popularity here, but I respect you and Mrs. Miller. I know you are his friends, and I want your advice. How am I to make amends to Mr. McLean? What am I to say to him? Do you know that for a few days of idiocy I was made to believe that you suspected him of the thefts? and it was his handkerchief I found on the floor behind my trunk. What will the man think of me? And yet I must tell him. I cannot sit by him day after day, see him, speak with him, and have my heart hammering out the words, 'He thinks you are his friend, and you thought him to be a thief.'"
It was more than Miller could stand. "Miss Forrest! Miss Forrest!" he exclaimed, as his wife sank into an easy-chair and hid her face in her hands. "You cover me with shame and confusion. Never in my life have I heard of so extraordinary a complication as this has been! never have I been so worried and distressed! My dear young lady, try and hear me patiently. You have been far more sinned against than sinning. A few hours ago Dr. Bayard—he who led you in your suspicions, for he told me so—left here crushed and humbled to find that he had been so blind and unjust. But I would gladly exchange places with him, for I've been worse. I've been weak enough to be made to look with other's eyes and not my own. McLean was indeed involved in grave suspicion, but nothing as compared with that which surrounded another,—a woman who was entitled to our utmost sympathy and protection because her natural protector was in the field far from her side,—a woman who did find friends and protectors in my young officers,—McLean and Hatton,—God bless 'em for it! for they stoutly refused to tell a thing until it was dragged from them by official inquiry, and then they had burned every tangible piece of evidence against her. She was at Robinson last winter, and money and valuables were constantly disappearing. Silken skirts were heard trailing in dark hall-ways at night; her form was seen in the room of the plundered officers. The stories followed her to Laramie. The night McLean and Hatton were robbed her silken skirts were heard trailing up the north hall of Bedlam and her feet scurrying over the gallery. Her handkerchief was found at McLean's bureau, and, while they were all waiting for her at Mrs. Gordon's, McLean himself collided with a feminine shape in the darkness out on the parade, and it slipped away without a word as though fearing detection. The night of the robbery at Bayard's she was alone up-stairs. Another night she was seen entering the hall-way without ringing the bell or knocking at the door. Another evening I, who was in the Bayards' library, listened for ten minutes to some one who was striving to pick the lock and make a secret entrance while Elinor was confined to her room and the doctor was known to be a quarter of a mile away at the hospital. At last, wearying of waiting for the thief to effect an entrance and permit of my seeing him or her in the hall, I sprang out upon the piazza and found—you. Then that night I strove to see Hatton and wring from him his knowledge of what had been going on in Bedlam. You implored him not to go. You, unwittingly, made him and, through him, McLean believe it was your own trouble you sought to conceal; and, though I thank God I was utterly mistaken, utterly wrong in my belief, I crave your forgiveness, Miss Forrest. It was I who urged that your brother be sent here at once, though the general believes it was on Mrs. Forrest's account, that he might put an end to these peculations and restore what property could be recovered from you,—you who have suffered a loss far greater than all the others put together and never said a word about it."
And poor Miller, who had never made so long a speech in his life before, turned chokingly away. Then Mrs. Miller spoke, and Miss Forrest's dilated eyes were turned slowly from the major's bulky shape to the matronly form upon the sofa and the woe-begone face that appeared from behind the handkerchief. Miss Forrest's cheeks had paled and her lips were parted. She had seized and was leaning upon the back of a chair, but not one word had she spoken. As Mrs. Miller's voice was heard, it seemed as though a slight contraction of the muscles brought about a decided frown upon her white forehead, but she listened in utter silence.
"Indeed, Miss Forrest, you musn't blame the major too much. He wouldn't have listened to a word against you—if—if it hadn't been for me. I was all at fault. But I couldn't have believed a word against you had it not been for those letters from Robinson. They—they——"
And here Mrs. Miller had recourse to her handkerchief, and Miss Forrest stretched forth her hand as though to urge her say no more. There was intense silence in the parlor a moment. Then through the open windows came the sudden sound of a scuffle, a woman's shriek, a sudden fall, voluble curses and ravings in Celestine's familiar tones, and the rush of many feet toward Bedlam.
Seizing his cap and hurrying thither, the major pushed his way through an excited group on the lower gallery. The sergeant of the guard, lantern in hand, was wonderingly contemplating the Scotch "striker" Lachlan, who firmly clung to the wrist of the struggling, swearing girl, despite her adjurations to let her go. Other men from the quarters were clustered around them, hardly knowing what to say, for Lachlan contented himself with the single word "thief!" and never relaxed his grasp until the major bade him do so, but instantly renewed it as his prisoner attempted to spring away. McLean came limping to the scene from the direction of the doctor's quarters just as Miss Forrest, too, appeared, and him Lachlan addressed:
"I found her rummaging in the bureau, sir."
And then Miss Forrest's quiet voice was heard as soon as the major's orders to bring a gag had silenced the loud protestations and accusations of the negress.