"Yes, she has done wrong, but—she is sorry for it—she has made amends."
"Then, my dear, your duty is plain. If she truly repents of her sin, and if you have given your promise——"
"But suppose keeping my promise to save this person—suppose it means—telling a lie?"
"Ah," replied the clergyman, solemnly lifting two scandalized palms, "it is my duty to forbid you, my child, under any circumstances to tell an untruth—even to save another from destruction."
As he uttered these words he blinked uneasily behind his powerful glasses, and immediately added with nervous haste: "I say that as a minister of the church, but—er—as a man——"
"Yes? As a man?" she questioned eagerly.
It is impossible to know how Horatio would have extricated himself from this dilemma, for, just as he was searching for some theological barrier against the girl's persistence, the telephone rang sharply.
Betty took up the receiver. "Yes?" she answered, while the curate wiped his brow and observed this fair American with wondering interest. What a country America must be, he reflected, if so charming and clever a young lady was a specimen of its secretaries! What must its leisure class be? Then he remembered that Hiram Baxter had once assured him that plumbers and gasfitters were the only leisure class in America. He had asked Harriet to make a note of the fact. Extraordinary, this American aristocracy of plumbers and gas-fitters!
The secretary, meantime, was listening, with brightening eyes and a flush of pleasure, to the telephone message.
"Don't you know who it is?" she smiled. "Miss Thompson. Yes, I was in Brighton, but I came up here this morning for—for some things."