“Perhaps somebody else put it there by mistake.”
“Nope! He owned up all right, when I put it to him.”
“Just how did he ‘own up,’ as you say?”
“Said——” Walter thought for a moment to get the words right, “—said he was sorry to use a fine name like that; said if I’d keep mum he’d stick by me.”
“And so you are keeping mum.”
“Well!” he flared. “Guess I c’n tell it to my own sister, can’t I?... An’ he ain’t stickin’ by me.”
“Oh!” she recalled. “You think he is interested in Phœbe?”
“Well, he better not be.”
No matter what Jerry may have privately thought she knew her duty at this moment, and that was to rid this boy’s mind of the suspicions that had begun to darken it. She was startled by the revelation; she would have to get alone and think things together before she could make up her mind as to the meaning of the facts Walter had presented; particularly was she astonished at Walter’s interest in protecting Phœbe Norris; but all that she cast aside and bent to the task of reassuring Walter of Richard’s good faith. She reminded him of the scene at the back of the Victoria, and drew tactfully the picture of Richard’s work in saving Walter from a terrible “accident”; she repeated Richard’s constant expression of interest in Walter’s welfare; but none of these seemed to affect the boy in the least.
Then she was driven out of the truth. “A fib in time saves nine,” she remembered one of Richard’s jokes. Prevarications had been piling up ever since that first deception. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!” One must keep in mind that in spite of Jerry’s calm in Walter’s presence she had always been afraid of him. He was absolutely heartless and, when he had the courage, brutal. In her own heart she believed he was a harmless lunatic who might any moment become violent. So she steadied herself for a final effort.