“Blackmailing him!” said Violet Wayne, and then sat very still a moment while the blood crept into her pale cheek, for the meaning of one or two vague allusions she had heard concerning Lucy Davidson flashed upon her.
“It slipped out. Of course, I should not have mentioned it to you.”
“You have done so, but the thing is so utterly hateful that it carries its refutation with it”; and there was a portentous sparkle in the girl’s eyes as she fixed them upon him.
Tony saw it, and trembled inwardly. He had been favored with glimpses of Violet Wayne’s inner self before, and could discern the difference between a becoming prudery and actual abhorrence.
“Still,” he said slowly, realizing that he was committed, “he disappeared. Of course, the affair may not be as black as it looks, and perhaps he was driven into it. Men with really good intentions are forced into doing what they never meant to now and then.”
Violet Wayne laughed a little scornful laugh. “Isn’t the cowardice which leads a man into meanness he is ashamed of more contemptible than bold iniquity?”
“Well,” said Tony, “I don’t quite know. I don’t worry over those questions, but it seems to me there is something to be said for the man who does what he shouldn’t when he can’t help it.”
“Can’t help it?”
“Yes,” said Tony. “I mean when it would only cause trouble to everybody if he did the correct thing.”
The girl looked at him curiously. “I think we had better abandon that subject, Tony,” she said. “We will go back to the other. Your friend could have had no hand in Davidson’s death—because he is your friend, and because I know what kind of man he is. Is there nothing you could do to clear him?”