“Please ask Miss Cass to enlighten you.” And Elfreda cast a wicked glance at that ineffectual lady.
“Miss Cass!” Poor George seemed more bewildered than ever.
“Ask her to tell you what has happened.” The amazing Elfreda spoke with the slightly bored air of one dismissing a tedious matter. And then, for all the world as if it no longer existed for her, at Mrs. Minever’s suggestion she turned calmly upon her heel and accompanied that lady to the drawing room.
George Norris left alone with Miss Cass in the agreeable vicinity of the good log fire made his halting plea for further enlightenment. Girlie, stricken as she was by the sense of her own guilt and the humiliation of her own absurdity, had great difficulty in complying with the request. Even upheld as she was now by the arrival of Lady Elfreda, it still called for a mighty effort to hold her tears in check.
Howbeit she was able to tell the incredible story after a fashion. It was such a poor and halting fashion, its lapses were so many that the unlucky George had to fill in the gaps as well as he could. The task was not easy for George’s naturally quick intelligence did not serve him well in these trying moments. But as with ever-growing dismay he really got the hang of the story at last, he hardly knew whether to laugh like a sportsman or to allow a sense of outrage to consume him. For he himself, as he was not slow to realize, had merely been fooled and put in a false position like every one else.
He was able to muster a laugh, but the underside of it was not mirth exactly. Over head and ears in love with the wicked little witch he certainly was, but he saw at once that all their plans were knocked awry. Laugh as he might at the absolute success of the trick that had been played, the cynicism and the arrogance which deprived every one of any rights in such an affair could not be passed over. Even the most injudicious of lovers must not omit that aspect of the case.
“But why—but why,” said the bewildered young man, as he gazed in humorous horror at the tear-stained Miss Cass, “why in the name of heaven did you let her do it?”
“She made me,” was Girlie’s simple and pathetic answer.
“Made you!” Like several other people he felt a desire to shake this pretty little noodle. But a sense of justice forced him to conclude that what she said was true. Such a will as hers would be nought in the scale with the implacable Elfreda’s. Recalling as he now did each phase of that young woman’s career of eleven days’ humorous devilment at The Laurels, he was inclined to exonerate Miss Cass. There was but one door where the blame could lie.
“The little devil!” George gave a sly whistle. “And I suppose her father has gone to The Laurels to fetch her?”