“Tony,” said the girl very slowly, “I fancy I should hate you if you ever made it necessary for me to do as much again, but we will try not to remember it. What has been troubling you?”
Tony was glad of the opening, though under different circumstances he would not have availed himself of it.
“I’ll try to tell you,” he said. “I am afraid Godfrey Palliser is very shaky. In fact he was oppressively morbid to-night.”
“No,” said the girl. “I know what you mean, but morbid is not the right word. Your uncle is now and then pedantic but one could only feel respect for him to-day.”
“Of course!” said Tony. “I shall be very genuinely sorry if his fancies turn out right. That, however, is not the question. He asked me if I still believed in Bernard, and I had a difficult thing to do. It seems that your faith in the man had almost convinced him. He wanted to believe him innocent, and leave him something in his will.”
“And you told him—”
“What could I tell him? Only that I was not so sure of Bernard as I had been.”
There was a gleam of something very like anger in Violet Wayne’s eyes. “So you shattered the faint hope he clung to, and turned the forgiveness, which, mistaken or not, would have been a precious thing just now, into vindictive bitterness!”
“He asked me,” said Tony. “What could I do?”
“You could have defended your friend—the man who has done so much for you.”