She sat now on an overturned log with Howard Brent on the ground beside her and facing her.
There was not much light except from the big camp fire many yards off. The pine trees and the hill made a rather gloomy background, and the stars were just struggling to show through the dusk.
“That was a pretty close shave you had this afternoon, Miss Peggy,” Howard began. It was awkward—this beginning of an awkward conversation, but as well one way as another.
Peggy nodded. “Let’s don’t talk about it tonight, if you don’t mind. It is silly, I know, but the more I think about the accident the more nervous I become. Why, I seem to be more afraid now than I actually was when I was hanging over that wretched precipice. I suppose, I was too paralyzed with terror then to realize what had happened. I just kept thinking that I was going to hold on to that tree and to Ralph, and that even if I died I wouldn’t let go. But now I keep having a vision of Ralph and myself sliding down forever and ever, with nothing to stop us. It would have been pretty awful, wouldn’t it?”
Peggy tried to laugh but the effort was faint-hearted.
Howard Brent frowned.
“It would have been about the most horrible thing I can imagine,” he answered gravely and with just the right amount of steadying sympathy in his voice. “As far as you are concerned I simply refuse to think of it. And, even though I don’t like Marshall, there isn’t any human being I dislike enough to care to contemplate such a fate overtaking him.”
Peggy’s lips parted and she flushed a little.
“Why don’t you like Ralph?” she asked quietly, but without any show of anger. “I have seen that you did not like him and I have been wondering about it lately. You see, Bettina Graham feels the same way and usually I have great respect for Bettina’s judgment. But I think she is mistaken about Ralph. You see, I have known him for several years, but not very intimately. He has been coming to our place in New Hampshire for a part of his holidays whenever he has liked, as his father and mine are great friends. Ralph and I have always been friendly enough, but he has never paid any particular attention to me until lately. I suppose I always seemed pretty young to him and a kind of tomboy. I really am one, you know, even if I am nearly grown. So, now, it seems awfully good of him to be interested in me, and I like him very much. That is why I think it is funny you and Bettina don’t like him. I know he wasn’t a good student at college and can’t make up his mind what kind of work he wishes to undertake. But there is time enough for him to find out later on.”
“Marshall is a cad,” Howard Brent interrupted. He had not intended to speak so abruptly, nor to show so much anger, but Peggy’s defense annoyed him.