“You say ‘we,’ Robbie?”
“Yes,” he said, with a momentary scowl, “I said ‘we.’ Of course, I’m in with Lew as soon as he turns up. I always said I was. You forget the nonsense I’ve talked about him. That’s all being out of sight that corrupts the mind. Lord, what a difference it makes to have him here!”
She looked a little wistfully at the young man to whom her own love and devotion mattered nothing. He calculated on it freely, took advantage of it, and thought no more of it—which was “quite natural”: she quieted all possibilities of rebellion in her own mind by this. “But, Robbie,” she said, “if he is in danger. I’m not one to advise you to be unfaithful to a friend—oh, not even if—— But his welfare goes before all. If it’s true all I’ve heard—if there’s been wild work out yonder in America, and he’s blamed for it——”
“Who told you that?”
“Partly Mr Somerville before you came, Robbie, and partly yourself—and partly it was in a newspaper I read.”
“A newspaper!” he cried, almost with a shout. “If it has been in the newspapers here——”
“I did not say it was a newspaper here.”
“I know what it was,” said Robbie, with a scornful laugh. “You’ve been at a woman’s tricks. I thought you were above them. You’ve searched my pockets, and you’ve found it there.”
“I found it lying with your coat, in no pocket: and I had seen it before in Mr Somerville’s hands. You go too far—you go too far!” she said.
“Well,” he said with bravado, “what does a Yankee paper matter?—nobody reads them here. Anyhow,” he added, “Lew and I, we’re going to face it out. We’ll stay where we are, and make ourselves as comfortable as we can. Danger at present there’s none. Oh, you need not answer me with supposing this or that; I know.”