“I cannot.”
“Mr. Whitely,” you cried, “cannot you force him to speak?”
“Miss Walton,” he replied suavely, and his very coolness in the strange condition made me feel that he was master of the situation, “I am as perplexed as you are at this extraordinary conduct in one who even now is eating bread from my hand. I have long since ceased to expect gratitude for benefits, but such malevolence surprises and grieves me, since I have never done Dr. Hartzmann any wrong, but, on the contrary, I have always befriended him.”
“I have been in the employ of Mr. Whitely,” I answered, “but every dollar he has paid me has been earned by my labor. I owe him no debt of gratitude that he does not owe me.”
“You owe him the justice that every man owes another,” you asserted indignantly. “To make vague charges behind one’s back, and then refuse to be explicit, is a coward’s and a slanderer’s way of waging war.”
“Miss Walton,” I cried, “I should not have spoken, though God knows that my motive was only a wish to do you a service, and I would give my life to do as you ask!”
For an instant my earnestness seemed to sway you; indeed, I am convinced that this was so, since Mr. Whitely apparently had the same feeling, and spoke as if to neutralize my influence, saying to you: “Miss Walton, I firmly believe that Dr. Hartzmann’s plea of honorable conduct is nothing but the ambush of a coward. But as he has been for two years in the most intimate and confidential position of private secretary to me, he may, through some error, have deluded himself into a conviction that gives a basis for his indefinite charges. I will not take advantage of the implied secrecy, and I say to him in your presence that if he has discovered anything which indicates that I have been either impure or criminal, I give him permission to speak.”
Even in that moment of entanglement I could not but admire and marvel at the skill with which he had phrased his speech, so as to seem absolutely open, to slur me by innuendo, and yet avoid the risk of exposure. It left me helpless, and I could only say, “I have not charged Mr. Whitely with either impurity or criminality.”
You turned to him and said, “This conduct is perfectly inexplicable.”
“Except on one ground,” he replied.