“Well,” said Muriel, “I must go.” She rose, but stood still a moment. “Mr. Prescott, it hurts me to see suspicion fall on my friends. You must clear yourself somehow.”
“Ah,” he said moodily, “how am I to set about it?”
“For one thing, you must not go away again. That would look bad.” She hesitated. “And, from a few words I heard, I fear it would bring the police after you.”
“It seems very probable; I’ll stay while I’m allowed,” he said with some bitterness and turned toward the door with her. Then a little color crept into his face as she held out her hand. “Miss Hurst,” he added, “you are a very staunch friend.”
Muriel smiled.
“It really looks as if staunchness were one of my virtues; but you see I venture to act on my opinions without paying much attention to what other people think. After all, that would be foolish, wouldn’t it?”
Then she got into the sleigh and left him wondering what she could have meant. He knew her friends regarded him as a man of inferior station, who, if cleared from suspicion, might perhaps be tolerated so long as he recognized his limitations and did not presume. Had Muriel wished to hint that she differed from them in this respect? The thought of it set his heart to beating fast and when he went back to his books he found it singularly difficult to fix his mind on them.
Muriel drove rapidly to the Leslie homestead and, reaching it after dark, joined the others at supper. During the meal, a reference to Jernyngham’s interview with the police officer gave her the opportunity she was waiting for.
“When Mr. Prescott went away it told badly against him, because people didn’t know what his object was,” she said.
She fixed her eyes on Gertrude, but the latter’s face was expressionless as she moved her plate.