"You know my sister, Mr.—Mr.—" I asked humbly.
He looked at me, perplexed for just a second.
"Sister be hanged!" he said at last. "I know you, Nat, and I'm glad to my finger-tips that you've got it in the neck, in spite of all your smartness."
"You're altogether wrong, sir," I said very stately, but hurt a bit, you know. "I've often been taken for my sister, but gentlemen usually apologize when I explain to them. It's hard enough to have a sister who—" I looked up at him tearfully, with my chin a-wabble with sorrow.
He grinned.
"Liars should have good memories," he sneered. "Miss Omar said she was an orphan, you remember, and had not a relative in the world."
"Did she say that? Did Nora say that?" I exclaimed piteously. "Oh, what a little liar she is! I suppose she thought it made her more interesting to be so alone, more appealing to kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself. I hope she wasn't ungrateful to you, too, as she was to that kind Mr. Latimer, before he found her out. And she had such a good position there, too!"
I wanted to look at him, oh, I wanted to! But it was my role to sit there with downcast eyes, just—the picture of holy grief. I was the good one—the good, shocked sister, and though I wasn't a bit afraid of anything he could do to me, or any game he could put up, I yearned to make him believe me—just because he was so suspicious, so wickedly smart, so sure he was on.
But his very silence sort of told me he almost believed, or that he was laying a trap.
"Will you tell me," he said, "how you—your sister got Latimer to lie for her?"