“Bella,” Jim said appealingly. And then I pinched his arm, and he drew himself up and looked properly outraged.
“Bella,” he said, coldly this time, “I can’t imagine why you have put yourself in this ridiculous position, but since you have—”
She turned on him in a fury.
“Put MYSELF in this position!”
She was frantic. “It’s a plot, a wretched trick of yours, this quarantine, to keep me here.”
Jim gasped, but I gave him a warning glance, and he swallowed hard.
“On the contrary,” he said, with maddening quiet, “I would be the last person in the world to wish to perpetuate an indiscretion of yours. For it was hardly discreet, was it, to visit a bachelor establishment alone at ten o’clock at night? As far as my plotting to keep you here is concerned, I assure you that nothing could be further from my mind. Our paths were to be two parallel lines that never touch.” He looked at me for approval, and Bella was choking.
“You are worse that I ever thought you,” she stormed. “I thought you were only a—a fool. Now I know you—for a brute!”
Well, it ended by Jim’s graciously permitting Bella to remain—there being nothing else to do—and by his magnanimously agreeing to keep her real identity from Aunt Selina and Mr. Harbison, and to break the news of her presence to Anne and the rest. It created a sensation beside which Anne’s pearls faded away, although they came to the front again soon enough.
Jim broke the news at once, gathering everybody but Harbison and Aunt Selina in the upper hall. He was palpitatingly nervous, but he tried to carry it off with a high hand.