It was six o'clock in the morning when he closed Mrs. Payton's front door behind him and went out to get in his car—giving a shuddering glance at that pool of water on the floor of the tonneau. Just as he was throwing in his clutch he heard the door open again, and Fred called to him. He went back, quickly; she was standing on the top step, haggard, ugly, dripping wet; a lock of hair had blown across her cheek, which was twitching painfully. She put out her hand to him, in a blind sort of gesture, but she did not look at him.
"I just wanted—to say," she said, and paused, for the jangle of the mules' bells and the clatter of a passing car drowned her voice;—"I wanted to—to say," she began again, with a gasp, "don't—" she stopped, with a sobbing laugh; "don't—tell Laura."
Don't tell!
Oh, she was a girl all right!—so Howard's thoughts ran as he drove home in the mist that had thickened into rain; Fred was a girl—a trembling, ignorant, frightened feminine creature! Suppose she did support a dead woman in her arms during that dreadful ride in the fog; suppose she did stand by, promptly obedient to the doctor's orders in that frantic time of endeavor in the office; suppose she had decided, quietly and wisely, exactly what was to be done, when it was plain that Flora's poor, melancholy little life had flown; suppose the coroner did say that he had never seen such nerve; suppose all those things—yet she had said those two pitiful words: "Don't tell." Yes, Fred Payton was a "girl"!
"You can talk all you want to about the 'new woman,'" Howard said, "I guess human nature doesn't change much...."
It changes so little, that at that revealing instant on the Paytons' front steps, with the light of the Egyptian maid's globe streaming out into the rain, he had wanted to put his arms around Freddy and kiss her! Who knows but what, if there had not been all those weeks of rocking about on the mud flats, listening to the eternal dry rustle of the blowing palms, dredging for shells, and bothering about Jack McKnight, he might not, then and there, in spite of the wonderfulness of her, and because of the weakness of her, have fallen in love with old Freddy? As it was, when she said that piteous, feminine thing, the tears had stung in his eyes; he wrung her hand, stammering out: "Never! Why, I—you—" But the door closed in his face, and he went back to climb into his motor and go off to his own house.
That was at six o'clock; it was nine before Mr. and Mrs. Childs—summoned, to Billy-boy's great annoyance, while he was shaving—reached No. 15. They found Mrs. Holmes there ahead of them, and met Mr. Weston on the door-step.
In the parlor, watched by Andy Payton's sightless eyes, the court sat upon Freddy—for, of course, the whole distressing affair was her fault—she had dragged poor, crazy Flora out to that shocking camp! "I said last spring it was perfec' nonsense," Mr. Childs vociferated—"a girl, renting a bungalow! Why did you allow it, Ellen?"
"My dear William! I was perfectly helpless. Girls do anything nowadays. When I was a young lady—"
"My girl doesn't do 'anything,'" Laura's father said; "as for Freddy, the newspapers will ring with it! Pleasant for me. My niece, alone with that Maitland fellow! I've always distrusted him. Going off to dig shells—a man with his income! That showed there's something queer about him. And Fred alone with him in that bungalow mixed up with a murder!"