"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you did not get out of the window last night?"
"Certainly! I did not."
He sat staring; and in the pause that followed, enlightenment came to Melicent, and she wondered at her own blindness. Gwen had asked to sleep in her room, in order to get out of the window!
That being so, she could not clear herself without incriminating her cousin; and in a flash she saw that if she said Gwen and she had changed beds the previous night, the others would all deny it. Her mind, travelling with the speed that comes in moments of crisis, discerned the strength of the case against her. Even Tommy did not know of last night's escapade. Both she and Mrs. Cooper could say with confidence that all the girls were in their own beds at half-past ten on Saturday night. She wondered at herself for being deceived by the flimsy pretext of the toothache, when she thought how unlikely the story would sound.
The girls must deny everything. They had no other course. They had to go on living at home, and such a thing, if known, would make life impossible, and turn their prison into a veritable dungeon keep.
She, on the contrary, had no intention of remaining where she was. Her uncle had already a bad opinion of her. To allow it to grow worse seemed the only course in the dilemma so suddenly developed.
After long thought, her uncle spoke, in a gentler tone than he had ever used to her.
"Confession, Melicent," he said, "is the only possible way to lessen my extreme displeasure. Last night, or to be more correct, at two o'clock this morning, I heard a casement flapping in the wind. I got up, believing it to be the landing window, and left my room without a light, to shut it. I found it closed, and was on the point of pushing it open, to look out, and see whence the noise came, when a movement in the yard below caught my eye. Two people were seated, side by side, upon the stone steps near your window, the window of which was no doubt causing the disturbance. One was a man, the other was my niece. I saw that the man had his arm round your waist. His face I could not distinguish, but in the light of recent events, I consider myself justified in supposing it to have been Alfred Dow."
The girl's short, indignant laugh, naturally increased her uncle's idea of her shamelessness.
"I saw you"—he went on—"I saw you escort him to the gate, shut and lock it after him, return and scramble in, by means of a piece of rope, into your bedroom. I stood there, broad awake, and saw all this. After hearing my story, will you persist in your denial?"