“Then why did you refuse to bear out my statement?”
“There were reasons. May I see that letter now?”
“Have you come of your own accord?” she asked.
Evelyn fighting for the man she loved was a very different girl from the proud, disdainful Evelyn who, twenty–four hours earlier, would have endured almost any infliction rather than flout her adversary in a public dining–room. She credited Rosamund with the adoption of any petty device to gain her ends, and felt that Fairholme was just the man to be used as a stalking–horse.
“No,” he said, “or rather, yes—and no. I am anxious to know the truth, but Baumgartner suggested that I ought to accept your offer of reading the evidence. Don’t you see, he has to consider the future a bit.”
“In what way?”
“Well, if Mrs. Laing stole a letter in his house, she—it’s a jolly hard thing to say—but she must be warned off.”
Baumgartner as a guardian of morals was a new conception. Evelyn felt that a more powerful foe than Rosamund was in the field. Her unimportant romance had suddenly widened out into the world–domain of politics. She must decide quickly and decide right. In that vital moment she realized that her postscript to the Lochmerig letter might have consequences far beyond their effect on Warden’s fortunes and her own.
“Lord Fairholme,” she said, turning so that she could watch the slightest change in the expression of his face, “does Mr. Baumgartner strike you as a man who would go out of his way to interfere in a dispute between two women?”
“Not unless there was money in it,” said Fairholme cheerfully.