It would seem, then, that Mr. Lyttleton must have had a confederate in the house, and for that role Mrs. Standish was plainly designated. An understanding of some close sort between her and Lyttleton had been quite evident from the very first day. And whose bedchamber window had shown the signals, if not hers? Not the pretty young widow's--not in any likelihood Mrs. Artemas'. To believe the latter intimate with the affair was to assume an understanding between her and Lyttleton--or else Trego.
Trego!
Sally was conscious of a slight mental start, a flurry of thoughts and sensations, of judgment in conflict with emotions.
Why not Trego? A likelier man than Lyttleton for such a job, indeed. Trego had such force of personality as to excuse the suspicion that what he might desire he would boldly go after and possess himself of. With a nature better adapted to the planning and execution of adventures demanding courage, daring and indifference to ethical considerations, Trego was capable of anything. Lyttleton was of flimsier stuff, or instinct were untrustworthy.
But after a little the girl sighed and shook her head. It was less plausible, this effort of hers, to cast Trego for the role of villain. True, he might have invented that story of the marks on the sands; true again, he might have acted in accord with Mrs. Artemas. But those were far-fetched possibilities. Unless, indeed, professed distrust and dislike of Mrs. Artemas had been altogether ingenious, a mask manufactured in anticipation of just this development.
No, it wasn't likely of Trego. She could not overlook the impression he conveyed of rugged honesty and straightforwardness. However strong the aversion he inspired, Sally could ignore neither that impression nor yet its correlative, that if he was not an over-righteous scorner of lies, he was the sort that would suffer much rather than seek to profit by a lie.
She perceived, with a little qualm of contrition, that she had been eager to condemn the man out of sheer unreasonable prejudice, all too ready to do him injustice in her thoughts. Unpleasant though she found his personality, harshly though his crudities grated upon her sensibilities, she owed him gratitude for an intimate service in an emergency when she had been only too glad of his personal intervention; and it were rank ingratitude to wish him ill, just as it was frankly base of her to be eager to think ill of him.
Repentance had got hold of this girl by the nape of her neck; it shook her roughly, if justly. For a little time she cringed in shame of herself and was torn by desire in some way to make amends to this animal of a Trego, whom she so despised because he refused to play up to the snob in her and ape the manners of his putative betters even as she was keen to ape them.
Perhaps it had needed this ugly happening, or something as unsettling, to reveal the girl to herself in a true light--at least a light less flattering than she found pleasant.
Certainly its aftermath in the way of private communion served well to sober and humble Sally in her own esteem. Outside the immediate field of her reverie she was now conscious of the words "sycophant" and "parasite" buzzing like mosquitoes about the head of some frantic wooer of sleep, elusive, pitiless, exasperating, making it just so much more difficult to concentrate upon this importunate problem of her duty.