Janet’s eyes gave forth a flash. If it had been Gussy who had made this charge instead of Julia, her mind was so excited and troubled that, in all likelihood, she would have burst forth with the secret which she had been so anxious hitherto to conceal. She stood looking at the girl, happy to feel that her blood did not rush to her cheeks as it had done already this evening. She said:
“I think you are mad, Julia, to ask me such a question.”
“Oh, I didn’t ask any question. I said I thought—and so I do, and nothing you can say will change me. Shall I tell you what I think? I think you were out at the door or at the staircase window—where Gussy always goes to watch for people—and that you saw it, and saw who did it, and won’t tell. I suppose it’s from a good motive,” said Julia, “to save somebody. I should do it myself, but that would be chiefly because I hate him, not to give him the satisfaction. However, only wait till Charley Meredith gets well. Oh! trust him to find it all out. He’ll not let anybody off. He’ll have no mercy. Now, that’s my opinion, Janet, if you like to know.”
“They are very bold opinions,” said Janet; “scarcely what a girl should venture to express; but I was neither at the staircase-window nor at the door, and if all that you imagine besides is as true as what you say of me——”
Janet did not like to commit herself to an absolutely false statement, though she had no objection to deceive. She liked, when she could, to answer inconvenient questions au pied de la lettre in a way which might be true. Thus she was not at the door in Julia’s sense of the word, but standing outside the door, perilously near it. She concluded with herself that, in saying she was not at the door, she was saying the exact and formal truth.
“Oh, I don’t know!” said Julia; “you may convince me as much as you like, but I’ll be of the same opinion still. The only thing is, I just warn you how it will be when Charley Meredith gets well. He won’t forgive the man that did that. He won’t forgive you if you’re mixed up in it. Don’t be mixed up in Charley Meredith’s affairs, Janet. He’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as he is well.”
“You are a Daniel come to judgment,” said Janet, with a laugh.
How strange a thing a laugh was from her at such a moment! For, though Julia was only a child, what she said was true enough. Meredith, when he got well, was not a man who would blunder about as the policeman did, hearing every story, not knowing how to separate the grain from the chaff. Even, he was a lawyer too, she reflected, with a gleam of terror. He would know how to put things together. Perhaps—this was possible, too—Dolff’s face, white and distorted by passion, might have been revealed to him as he fell, as it was to Janet. He might remember as his faculties came back, and he would be able to follow it out.
Going back upon that evening, Janet began to trace with horror the evidence that might be got together. There were the people at the library who saw them meet and speak to each other, and who might have seen them walk off together, thus identifying her at least. And Meredith himself would know that she must have witnessed the attack upon him. Her anxieties had been quieted by this long want of cessation from all progress. But now that he was getting well! Oh, Julia was right. He would let no one off; he would take full vengeance for his injuries. All the world would know how she was mixed up in it! She would have to appear, to be cross-examined, to tell all she knew, and explain how she was there, and it would be in all the newspapers.
This was what chiefly struck Janet with anguish and terror unspeakable. Everybody would know it! Her friends would look upon her darkly; the vicarage—even that kind house would close its doors. To be traitor to the people who had been so kind to her—to meet another woman’s lover, the betrothed of the daughter of the house! Who would have anything to say to a governess who had done that? And though she might tell the episode of the papers, and thus account for her communications with Meredith, who would believe her? Janet had an hour or two of extreme anguish turning this all over in her mind.