Burton held himself from retorting: "It will be better for him if you don't," and merely answered, with as much kindliness as he could put into his voice:
"I shall not speak of it unless necessary. If we can clear him without that, all right; I know he would rather have it that way. But if it becomes necessary to prove where he was that evening, in order to prove that he could not have been in your father's room at the same time, I am going to tell the facts. There won't be any harm to you in them. And there isn't anything else to do, if that question comes up."
But Miss Hadley would not answer. She gave him one look of indignant and tearful reproach, and then fled from the room, leaving him to find his way out of the house as best he could.
Burton found himself in a somewhat embarrassing quandary as he considered the matter. While he felt morally satisfied that he had found the true explanation of Henry's presence in the neighborhood, and the proof of his innocence of all complicity in the assault upon the banker, he realized that it would not be easy to convince either a prejudiced public or a jury. Miss Hadley was obviously not to be counted upon. She might deny the whole thing, or she might be terrified into admitting anything as to time and place that the prosecution might wish to draw from her. Undoubtedly the opposition of her father would seem to the multitude merely another reason for suspecting Henry, instead of its being, as Burton saw it, a fairly conclusive proof that he would have been more than ordinarily scrupulous in his dealings with the man whom he hoped to call his father-in-law. And of course Henry would neither tell himself, nor thank Burton for telling, a piece of news that would be gossip and cause for laughter in a small town like High Ridge. It was unfortunate that Henry should have fixed his affections upon so unstable a creature as the pretty Miss Hadley, anyhow. Why couldn't he have had the judgment to choose some one like--well, like his sister Leslie, who would have walked by the side of the man she loved down into the valley of the shadow of death if need be?
But then, he reflected cynically, people never did show any judgment when it came to falling in love, for the matter of that. There was Miss Underwood, herself. Of course Philip was a charming boy, and all that, but--He shook his head impatiently, and went on to interview Henry.
[CHAPTER XIII]
HENRY IS HARD TO HANDLE
Burton found Henry Underwood in prison quite as calm and saturnine as he had been in the garden.
"Have you made any arrangement for counsel?" he asked, after shaking hands.
"Counsel? You mean a lawyer? No."