“You doubt Julian’s testimony?” and Mrs. Ogden had the grace to blush under Ethel’s scorn. “You, his own cousin?”
“Well, my dear,” she began, moving uneasily. “Julian has sometimes, eh, prevaricated. I remember as a boy he used to tell the most abominable stories to get out of going to church, and I—I—have reason to fear the habit’s grown on him,—of prevarication, I mean,” she added confusedly. “Have you ever caught him in an, eh, evasion?”
It was the one thing in which Ethel had caught Barclay in, and she winced at the question. “Oh, pshaw! what is an evasion?” she asked with assumed lightness. “We are all guilty of it, and you remember the boy who said ‘a lie is an abomination of the Lord, but a very present help in time of trouble’.”
Instead of smiling, Mrs. Ogden sighed. “Some people attract trouble,” she said gloomily. “Julian is one of them.”
Ethel selected a silk waist from the bureau drawer with care. “Has Julian spent many years in the Far East?”
“I don’t know how long he was out there,” answered Mrs. Ogden. “We haven’t met for years until this winter. Julian has traveled ever since the death of Cousin Julian Barclay, senior—he adopted him, you know.”
“No, I wasn’t aware of it,” Ethel dressed more slowly; she had tried before, but unsuccessfully, to get Mrs. Ogden to discuss Julian Barclay, and she was determined to learn something of him now that Mrs. Ogden was at last in a communicative mood.
“Yes, Cousin Julian left him all his money as well as his name——”
“Then Julian’s father was——?”
“William, Cousin William,” Mrs. Ogden added quickly. “Both Julian’s parents died while he was young, and he was brought up by Cousin Julian, the most eccentric, cantankerous old wretch!” Mrs. Ogden paused breathlessly. “No one grieved when he died, and his will just about saved young Julian from—What do you want, Celeste?” she asked abruptly as the Frenchwoman appeared.