Roger had not said a word. He was standing in front of the fire, watching the stairs.
"When we found the note," Peter went on in his awful booming voice, "saying you were going at last to be true to yourself, and when you and Roger had disappeared, what were we to think? Especially after the way you two had fallen into each other's arms from the moment you met."
"How interesting!" said a voice from the staircase.
It was Maisie!
Well, what's the use of going into it again? She gave Roger his ring instantly, and Roger was positively grey. He went back on me without a particle of shame—said I'd suggested the whole thing and begged him to help me; that he'd felt like a fool the whole time.
"Maisie, darling," he said, "surely you know that there's nobody in all the world for me but you."
He held out the ring to her, but she shook her head.
"I'm not angry—not any more," she said. "I've lost my faith in you, that's all. One thing I'm profoundly grateful for—that you and Clara had this—this explosion before we were married and not after."
"Maisie!" he cried.
All at once I remembered Bill's letter, which would positively clear us. But Peter said Harry Delaney's coat had been stolen from the machine, letter and all! Maisie laughed at that, as if she didn't believe there had been such a letter, and Roger went a shade greyer. All at once it came to me that now Bill would never forgive me. He is so upright, Bill is, and he expects everyone to come up to his standard. And in a way Bill had always had me on a pedestal, and he would never believe that I had been such a fool as to jump off for a lark.