“A post!” She laughed rather bitterly. “I’ve a good recommendation for any post, haven’t I? A story like this would be sure to follow me up somehow, and I should probably be politely requested by my employer to leave.’
“Then go away for a bit. I’ll find the money somehow. I won’t have you baited by all the old tabby-cats in the neighbourhood.”
Ann stood up, her head thrown back proudly on its slim young throat.
“No,” she said with decision. “No, Robin. I’m not going to run away from village gossip. I’m going to face it out.”
Robin sprang up.
“Well done, little sister!” he exclaimed, a ring of wholehearted admiration in his voice. “We’ll stick it out together—stay here and live it down.” He held out his hand and, Ann laying hers within it, they shook hands soberly, just as in earlier days they had so often shaken hands over some childish pact.
The loyalty of Ann’s friends, of Lady Susan and of Cara and the rector, was a very real consolation. Lady Susan had descended on the Cottage the moment the story came to her ears—which happened to be on the very day following Coventry’s departure from Silverquay. Brett, she vouchsafed, had run up to town unexpectedly for a few days. “And he’s just as well out of the way,” she added briskly, “till we’ve got this tangle straight”—little dreaming that her nephew was responsible for the whole knotting of the tangled skein. By kindly probing she elicited the real, grim tragedy which lay behind all the gossip, and her anger against Eliot knew no bounds. But once she had given characteristic expression to her opinion of men in general, and of Eliot in particular, she promptly set to work to try and mend matters.
“I can explain to Eliot how you came to be at the Hotel de Loup that night,” she asserted. “He won’t presume to doubt me!”
“No. But he has presumed to doubt me,” replied Ann bitterly. “So it wouldn’t help in the least if you explained all day.”
“How do you mean—wouldn’t help?”