"With Miss Rose?"
"What did you call her?"
"Mrs. Rose Légère she called herself, but I guess that wasn't her name. Yes, he was kind of in love with her. He was one of her favorites anyhow, but that was just because he had a pull with the politicians, you see. She let him love her so's she could work him, an' when I put him wise to that, he was glad to help me."
Marian clinched her fist.
"The abominable cur!" she said.
"Oh, no! Not that," protested Mary. She had failed this man by retracting her affidavit, but she meant to be loyal to him wheresoever she could. His name slipped from her with no thought of consequences. "It took a lot of nerve an' goodness to do for me what Mr. Dyker done."
Marian's gaze became fixed. She was a woman whose whole training had shaped her against sudden betrayal of emotion, but she needed every precept of that training now. She did not start, she did not flush, but her hands moved to the arms of her chair and gripped them hard.
"Did you say Mr. Wesley Dyker?" she asked.
Her voice did not betray her to the woman opposite, but Mary feared lest her own desire to defend her deliverer had betrayed him.
"That's who it was, Miss Lennox," she admitted, adding anxiously: "But I didn't go to mention it.