She was still in a fine Shakespearean temper when I carried her off up-stairs. Reserves were impossible between us; her right to any privacy in her own affairs had been given away from the start; that was one of the pleasing features of the situation.
"Marry him! marry him!" she cried. "That impertinent, meddlesome boy! That false, dishonorable"—
"Go slow, dear," I said. "I don't think he's quite so bad as that."
"And what do I want with him! And what do you think he tells me, Mrs. Daly? And whether there's any truth in him, how do I know? He declares it was not Michael Harshaw who sent for me at all! The message, all the messages, were from him. In that case I have been decoyed over here to marry a man who not only never asked me to come, but who stood by and let me be hoaxed in this shameful way, and now leaves me to be persecuted by this one's ridiculous offers of marriage,—as if I belonged to all or any of the Harshaws, whichever one came first! Michael may not even know that I am here," she added in a lower key. "If Cecil Harshaw was capable of doing what he has done, by his own confession, it would be little more to intercept my answers to his forgeries."
That was true, I said. It was quite possible the young man lied. She would, of course, give Mr. Michael Harshaw a chance to tell his story.
"I cannot believe," said the distracted girl, "that Michael would lend himself, even passively, to such an abominable trick. Could any one believe it—of his worst enemy!"
Impossible, I agreed. She must believe nothing till she had heard from her lover.
"But if Michael did not know it," she mused, with a piteous blush, "then Cecil Harshaw must have sent me that money himself—the insolence! And after that to ask me to marry him!"
Men were fearfully primitive still, after all that we had done for them, I reminded her, especially in their notions of love-making. Their intentions were generally better than their methods. No great harm had been done, for that matter. A letter, if written that night, would reach Mr. Michael Harshaw at his ranch not later than the next night. All these troubles could wait till the real Mr. Harshaw had been heard from. My husband would see that her letter reached him promptly, and in the mean time Mr. Cecil need not be told that we were proving his little story.
I was forced to humor her own theory of her case; but I have no idea, myself, that Cecil Harshaw has not told the truth. He does not look like a liar, to begin with, and how silly to palm off an invention for to-day which to-morrow would expose!