“What did you think it was, Miss Pearson?” he asked. “What were you afraid of when you heard that shot? That something had happened between Reivers and myself?”
“I—I meant to warn you,” she said, greatly flustered. “Tilly told me all about—a lot of things last night. She told me that she had told Reivers all she heard you say to me that first night here, and that he—Mr. Reivers, she said, was your enemy, and that he would—would surely hurt you.”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t want to see you get hurt, because I felt it was because of me that you came here. I—I don’t want any one hurt because of me.”
“That’s all?” he asked.
She looked surprised.
“Why, yes.”
Toppy nodded curtly.
“Then Tilly told you that Mr. Reivers had a habit of hurting people?”
At this the red in her cheeks rose to a flush. Her blue eyes looked at him waveringly, then dropped to the ground.