"Yes, yes, I s'pose so," admitted Susan worriedly. "But, lan' sakes, look at us! What are we goin' to say? Now he wants to know why we hain't told him about knowin' you."
"I don't know, Susan, I don't know." The girl shook her head and caught her breath a bit convulsively. "Of course, when I first let it go that I was 'Miss Stewart,' I never realized where it was going to lead, nor how—how hard it might be to keep it up. I've been expecting every day he'd find out, from some one there. But he hasn't—yet. Of course, Aunt Hattie, who keeps house for father, is in the secret, and SHE'D never give it away. Most of the patients don't know much about me, anyway. You see, I've never been there much. They just know vaguely of 'the doctor's daughter,' and they just naturally call her 'Miss Stewart.'"
"Yes, yes, I see, I see," nodded Susan, again still worriedly. "But what I'm thinkin' of is US, Miss Dorothy. How are we goin' to get 'round not mentionin' you all this time, without his findin' out who you be an' demandin' a full exposition of the whole affair. Say, look a-here, would it be—be very bad if he DID find out you was Dorothy Parkman?"
"I'm afraid—it would be, Susan." The girl spoke slowly, a bit unsteadily. She had gone a little white at the question.
"Has he SAID anything?"
"Nothing, only he— When we were talking that day, and he was flinging out those questions one after another, about Hinsdale, and what I knew of it, he—he asked if I knew Dorothy Parkman."
"Miss Dorothy, he didn't!"
"But he did. It was awful, Susan. I felt like—like—"
"Of course you did," interposed Susan, her face all sympathy, "a-sailin' under false premises like that, an' when you were perfectly innocuous, too, of any sinfulness, an' was jest doing it for his best good an' peace of mind. Lan' sakes, what a prediction to be in! What DID you say?"
"Why, I said yes, of course. I had to say yes. And I tried to turn it off right away, and not talk any more about it. But that was easy, anyway, for—for Mr. Keith himself dropped it. But I knew, by the way he looked, and said 'yes, I know her, too,' in that quiet, stern way of his, that—that I'd better not let him find out I was she—not if I wanted to—to stay in the room," she finished, laughing a little hysterically.