“It won’t be true in any case,” I said, “if I take even part of the blame.”
“But you mustn’t say what isn’t true.”
Miss Battersby is unreasonable, though she means well. It is clearly impossible for me to be strictly truthful and at the same time to claim, as my own, misdeeds of which I do not even know the nature. I walked across the hall in the direction of the library door. Miss Battersby followed me with her hand on my arm.
“Do your best for her,” she whispered pleadingly.
Thormanby was certainly in a very bad temper. He was sitting at the far side of a large writing table when I entered the room. He did not rise or shake hands with me. He simply pushed a letter across the table toward me with the end of a paper knife. His action gave me the impression that the letter was highly infectious.
“Look at that,” he said.
I looked and saw at once that it was in Lalage’s handwriting. I was obliged to give up the idea of claiming it as mine.
“Why don’t you read it?” said Thormanby.
“I didn’t know you wanted me to. Do you?”
“How the deuce are you to know what’s in it if you don’t read it?”