“If you could only have just happened to hold your tongue,” Winnie exclaimed, springing from her seat and pacing the floor. “Adelaide,” she added, “won’t you go to Mr. Mudge and keep him busy hearing your testimony until Milly has time to get away from Madame Celeste’s. That woman is a match for a lawyer even, but if he happens to meet Milly there she will be frightened into anything. I knew there would be trouble when Mr. Mudge took that bill.”
“Of course I will go, if you would like to have me do so,” Adelaide replied, rising, “but really, Winnie, I can’t say that I at all comprehend the situation.”
Winnie gave each of us a look of despair. “I didn’t intend you should,” she said, “but since ignorance bungles in this way I will explain. Milly has very weakly been getting things for Cynthia and allowing them to be charged on her bills. I have remonstrated with her and she has promised to do so no more. I told her how wicked it would be to send these accounts in to her father as her own, and she has not done that. She has kept them separate, intending to settle them whenever Cynthia paid up.”
“I don’t see why Cynthia could not have taken her debts on her own shoulders instead of entangling Milly,” Adelaide remarked.
“Simply because Cynthia has no credit. Madame Celeste would not trust her for a penny, while she would let Milly run up any amount. Well, either Cynthia has paid or Milly has obtained the money in some other way. One thing is certain, she has it and she has gone down to pay Madame Celeste; anxious, as you may well imagine, to get her feet out of the quicksand and not by any mischance to have that bill sent home to her father. Now, don’t you see that if Mr. Mudge ascertains that Milly has a secret of this kind, that the next thing he will do will be to suspect that Milly stole the money in order to extricate herself from this trouble.”
“Impossible,” Adelaide exclaimed. “Milly has only to tell where the money came from.”
“And I have asked her and she will not tell. It is all right, she assures me, but she can not or will not tell how.”
“Silly goose! I will get it out of her,” said Adelaide. “And meantime there is no need whatever that she should be even suspected. She did not do it—and suspicion might as well start out from the first on the right track. I will go at once to Mr. Mudge, and enlighten his benighted mind.”
“What is your theory, Adelaide?” I cried, but not before the door had closed behind her.
“Don’t stop her,” Winnie pleaded. “Time is precious; Mr. Mudge may have tired waiting for Milly and have gone. No matter what her theory is, so long as it takes suspicion from Milly. I had great hopes that Cynthia would succeed in making him think I had done it.”