They were both looking at her—these two men who between them held the strings of her future. Jethro’s light eyes were a bit cold and hard. He was suspicious, like all simple men. She said, putting one hand stiffly toward the companion beechwood chair:
“This is my brother——”
She broke off, a nervous dread sealing her lips. She had nearly said “my brother Edred,” and then she could not remember whether, at that first interview in the big bay window, she had given him a name.
“My brother—the sailor,” she went on falteringly, her stiff hand still out, like the wooden arm of a signal, toward the chair in which he sat looking carelessly nonchalant. “He has come home from sea. His ship,” she seemed to see the suspicion deepen on Jethro’s open face as he glanced at the visitor’s rough hands and cheap suit, “was wrecked.”
“The Matador—wrecked off the coast of West Africa. I was second officer. A Dutch vessel ran into us. Made off without offering to help. That’s like those cowardly Dutchmen. I was hanging on to a mast for ten hours. Everything I had in the world gone, of course.”
The lies rolled glibly off his ready tongue. Pamela felt her cheeks flame as if hot irons had brushed them. She did not look up. Let these two settle her fate between themselves.
Jethro took a wide stride into the room and put out his brown hand.
“Glad to see you,” he said with simple heartiness. “Glad to see any of my mother’s people at Folly Corner.”
After that they went on talking. She didn’t hear a word—only the amicable voices. That Edred was smoothly lying she felt sure; that Jethro was taking every word as solemnly as he took his Bible or the advice of his head man she felt equally sure. They were so simple, so true, these Sussex folk. They had taken her on trust. They would take him on trust too—this unscrupulous jail-bird, her lover, hero, the wrecker of her life.
Why couldn’t she stand up and say: