"Ask Tilly; she knows all the delightful facts now about Miss Peggy and her highly respectable family."
The decisive tone in which this was said, the significant expression of the speaker's face as she glanced at Tilly, and Tilly's own silence at the moment impressed Will very strongly, as Agnes fully intended; and when a minute later she slipped her hand over Dora's arm, and went off with her toward the tennis ground, and Tilly refused to tell him what this something that was "up" was, honest Will felt convinced that the "something" must be very queer indeed.
Poor Tilly saw and understood at once the nature of the impression that Will had received; but what could she do? It was certainly better to keep silence than to speak and tell that dreadful, dreadful story of "Smithson, alias Smith." Even, yes, even if it was true,—for Tilly, spite of her vehement defence, her stout declaration of disbelief at the first, had a shuddering fear at her heart as she thought of that last paragraph about the girl of fourteen or fifteen, and of that letter to South America,—a shuddering fear that the story might be true; but even then she would not be one of those to point a finger at poor innocent Peggy; for, whatever her father might have done, Peggy was innocent.
There was one person, however, that Tilly could speak to, could ask counsel of, and that, of course, was her grandmother. Grandmother, she was quite sure, would agree with her that the story was not to be chattered about; and even if it were true that Mrs. Smith and Peggy were those very Smithsons, neither was to blame, but only, as she had heard her father say once of the family of a man who had proved a defaulter, "innocent victims who were very much to be pitied."
But perhaps—perhaps grandmother would not believe that Mrs. Smith and Peggy were "those Smithsons," and perhaps she would find some careful way to investigate the matter and prove that they were not. With this hope springing up over her fears, Tilly flew along the corridor to her grandmother's room.
"What! what! what!" cried grandmother, as she listened to the story; "I don't believe a word of Agnes's suspicions. There are millions of Smiths in the world."
"But did you hear what I said about that last paragraph,—the girl of fourteen or fifteen, and—and the letter,—the letter to South America?" asked Tilly, tremulously.
"In what paper was it that Agnes found the statement?"
"It was some morning paper: I don't know which one,—I only remember seeing the date."
Grandmother rang the bell, and sent for all the morning papers. When they were brought her, she put on her spectacles and began the search for "Smithson, alias Smith." One, two, three papers she searched through; and at last there it was,—"Smithson, alias Smith!"