“Mr. Brewster!” Leila rose. “I have listened to you and I have answered your questions very patiently, but now I must ask you to excuse me. You have no right to question me, my conduct is no concern of yours——”
“Except where it touches upon my wife’s.” Her guest, too, had risen, and although he spoke quietly his voice quivered. “Your story is substantially the same as hers, but you both ignored one detail—that the Featherstones might have caught a glimpse of her companion and that others might have seen them both leave the Inn. Please believe, Mrs. Storm, that I am not attempting to censure you. Your loyalty to my wife, your effort to shield her is very praiseworthy from the standpoint of friendship, but there is something holier than that which has been violated.”
“Oh, not that!” Leila cried. “Julie hasn’t done anything really wrong! You must believe that, Mr. Brewster! Oh, I warned her not to go, that it was foolishly indiscreet!”
“Yet she went.” Brewster’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “I only came here to learn the truth beyond possibility of a mistake. I won’t detain you any longer.”
He bowed and turned to the door, but Leila sprang forward and caught his arm.
“Oh, what are you going to do?”
Brewster drew himself up, and his slight, dapper figure assumed a sudden dignity it had not borne before.
“I am going to turn her out of my house! To send her to this puppy, Mattison, whom she loves!”
“She doesn’t! Mr. Brewster, you must listen to me, you shall! You are on the point of making a terrible mistake, a mistake that will wreck both your lives!” Leila pleaded frantically. “Julie is not in love with Ted Mattison! It is only a flirtation; that luncheon yesterday was the merest escapade——”
“Like the other luncheons and motor trips and tétes-a-téte which have made her the talk of Greenlea for weeks past, while I was supposed to be blind and deaf and dumb?” Brewster shook off his hostess’ detaining hand. “I have reached the end now——”