She guessed the drift of the questioning and was hot with indignation. For a moment Elithe hesitated and her face grew spotted as she, too, began to see the snare before her.
“I liked him. Yes.”
“Very much?”
She did not answer him at once, and when she did she said, “What does it matter whether I liked him much or little?”
She was proving herself her aunt’s own niece. Her voice sounded defiant; her eyes had lost their look of entreaty and confronted the lawyer in a way which made him feel very uncomfortable. He looked up at the spider’s web. The fly had veered away from it, and the spider was in pursuit. His fly might escape him if he were not more wary and discreet. He must prove that Jack Percy, as John Pennington, had been the lover of this girl, whom he disliked to catechize as much as she disliked to have him. After a little more skirmishing on his part, and evasion on Elithe’s, he cleared his throat, gave one look at the big spider swinging down from the ceiling and said, “Miss Hansford, I believe you were engaged to marry Mr. Percy, were you not?”
The effect was wonderful. Elithe had not expected this in so bare-faced a form, and it roused her to a pitch of high excitement.
“Engaged to Mr. Percy! I? Never! It is false; all false. Why will you torture me so? Why will anybody believe it, when it is not true? I was never engaged to him; never could have been. Never! He was my friend. That was all. I shall say no more about him, or anything else.”
She emphasized the “all” and the “friend” with a stamp of her foot and a nod of her head, and, without being told to go, walked deliberately from the place where she had been standing. No effort was made to recall her. She felt that she was through and put out her hand to find her chair.
“Let’s go out! Can’t we?” she said to her aunt, whose shoulder she grasped in her blindness.
Everything swam around her. The voice of the lawyer, asking if she were not engaged to Jack Percy, kept sounding like thunder. Paul’s face was seen through a mist,—troubled, anxious and sorry; the floor came up to meet her, and, by the time she reached the door, led by her aunt, she fainted. Instantly Paul arose to go to her,—then sank back with a groan, remembering he was not free.