Mason watched him thoughtfully. “Let’s see if I get you straight, Hungerford. You come to me with all this dirt, hoping I’ll be able to contradict it, hoping I can tell you something good about her, is that right?”
“No,” Hungerford said.
“The hell it isn’t!” Mason told him. “You’re interested in Belle, but you don’t know how much. You’re so wrapped up in conventions that you can’t separate her from her parental environment. When you come right down to it, it’s not Belle you’re uncertain of, but yourself.”
Hungerford flushed, started to make an angry retort, then, under the steady stare of the lawyer’s eyes, lost his anger. After a moment, he said, “I guess you’re right, Mr. Mason. I hadn’t stopped to analyze my own feelings... but I can tell you now that this little talk has helped me understand myself. I know how I feel now.”
Mason watched him with sympathetic eyes.
“Now then, ” he said, “I’ll tell you something. Belle didn’t intend to keep right on traveling in your set, as you’ve expressed it, because she never intended to see you again.”
Hungerford’s face showed surprise.
“Get this,” Mason said, “and get it straight. If there was anything illegal about the manner in which Carl Moar acquired that money, Belle didn’t know it. He told his family he’d won it playing a lottery. That’s what Belle thought. Moar had been working and saving on a small salary. He’d been a bachelor much of his life. He wasn’t Belle’s father. Belle’s father abandoned her and her mother when she was three years old. They’ve never seen or heard from him since. Mrs. Newberry had a little money, enough to get by on. She put Belle through college. Then she married Carl Moar. Naturally, Belle had but little sympathy for her natural father. She became very much attached to Carl Moar. He was the only real father she’d ever known. Then the family had this windfall. She had a chance to travel. She met you. You were inclined to accept her as one of your crowd. You found her interesting, and because her father and mother seemed to be well-to-do tourists, you acted on the assumption they were.”
“That’s the only ground on which Belle could have met you and enjoyed your companionship. Otherwise you’d have patronized her, or ignored her, or pitied her. She was smart enough to know she could never be received on that basis after you returned to your friends on the Mainland. Therefore, she intended to walk off the ship and never see you again. The memory of a few days of pleasant companionship would be something which she’d always cherish. It never entered her head that her stepfather was an embezzler. If she had thought there had been anything illegal in the manner in which he acquired his money, she’d never have touched a cent of it.”
Hungerford said simply, “I care for her — a lot.”