“Why not?” demanded Arly, stopping in front of her. “Any plan like that must be so full of criminal crookedness that exposure alone is enough to put an end to it.”
“Exposure,” faltered Gail, and struggled automatically with a lifelong principle. “It was told to me in confidence.”
Arly looked at her in astonishment.
“I could shake you,” she declared, and instead put her arm around Gail. “Did that person betray no confidence when he came to your uncle’s house this morning! Moreover, he told you this merely to over-awe you with the glitter of what he had done. He made that take the place of love! Confidence! I’ll never do anything with so much pleasure in my life as to betray yours right now! If you don’t expose that person, I will! If there’s any way we can damage him, I intend to see that it is done; and if there’s any way after that to damage him again and again, I want to do it!”
For the first time in that miserable day, Gail felt a thrill of hope, and Arly, at that moment, had, to her, the aspect of a colossal figure, an angel of brightness in the night of her despair! She felt that she could afford to sob now, and she did it.
“Do you suppose that would save Uncle Jim?” she asked, when they had both finished a highly comforting time together.
“It will save everybody,” declared Arly.
“I hope so,” pondered Gail. “But we can’t do it ourselves, Arly. Whom shall we get to help us?”
The smile on Arly’s face was a positive illumination for a moment, and then she laughed.
“Gerald,” she replied. “You don’t know what a dear he is!” and she rang for a cabin boy.