“But you were very foolish in deceiving us. I can’t understand yet why you did so.”
“I can only tell you that it was for Cyril’s sake.”
“Oh,” she cried, “it could not have been because of any benefit that you would get! That would never have tempted you.”
He read unshaken confidence in her eyes and it cost him a stern effort to refrain from reckless speech. Muriel was beautiful, but that was not all: she was generous and fearless, a loyal friend and a staunch partizan.
“Well,” Prescott confessed, “when I explained, I was more afraid of you than of Jernyngham. I wanted to keep your good opinion, and I wondered whether you had only given it to me because you thought I was Cyril Jernyngham. From your friends’ point of view Jack Prescott is a very different kind of person.”
Muriel blushed.
“Is it unpardonable that I was angry when I first found out the mistake? Try to imagine with what ideas I have been brought up. But the feeling left me when I saw how merciless Jernyngham was; his hard words turned it into sympathy.”
“That is something to be thankful for, though it doesn’t content me. I think you would be sorry for any one, even an enemy, who was in trouble and getting hurt.”
She grasped his meaning and looked at him steadily with an air of pride.
“Then must I tell you that I have as much faith in Jack Prescott as I had in the man whom I supposed to be Cyril Jernyngham? But you must justify my confidence. You have been wrongly and cruelly accused; don’t you see the duty that lies on you?”