"But didn't you know it was wrong?" he said; "that it was a criminal offense!" He could not keep the dismay out of his voice.
"I did it for Mamma's sake and yours," she said, quailing.
"Well," he said, and in his relief at knowing that he need not think of David Richie, he was almost gay—"well, you mustn't tell any one else your motive for committing a—" Nannie suddenly burst out crying. "Mamma wouldn't say that to me," she said, "Mamma was never cross to me in her whole life! But you and Mr. Ferguson—" she could not go on, for tears. He was instantly contrite and tender; but even as he tried to comfort her, he frowned; of course in the end he would suffer no loss, but the immediate situation was delicate and troublesome. "I'll have to go and see Mr. Ferguson, I suppose," he said. "You mustn't speak of it to any one, dear; things really might get serious, if anybody but Mr. Ferguson knew about it. Don't tell a soul; promise me?"
She promised, and Blair left her very soberly. The matter of the money was comparatively unimportant; it was his, subject only to the formality of its transfer to the estate. But that David Richie should have been connected even indirectly with his personal affairs was exquisitely offensive to him—and Elizabeth knew about it! "She's probably sitting there by the window, looking like that robin, and thinking about him," he said to himself angrily, as he hurried back to the River House. There seemed to be no escape from David Richie. "I feel like a dog with a dead hen hanging round his neck," he said to himself, in grimly humorous disgust; "I can't get away from him!"
He found his wife in their parlor at the hotel, but she was not in that listless attitude that he had grown to expect,—huddled in a chair, her chin in her hand, her eyes watching the slow roll of the river. Instead she was alert.
"Blair!" she said, almost before he had closed the door behind him; "I have something to tell you."
"I know about it," he said, gravely; "I have seen Nannie."
Elizabeth looked at him in silence.
"Would you have supposed that Nannie, Nannie, of all people! would have had the courage to do such a thing?" he said, nervously; it occurred to him that if he could keep the conversation on Nannie's act, perhaps that—that name could be avoided. "Think of the mere courage of it, to say nothing of its criminality."
"She didn't know she was doing wrong."