“When I found that they believed something that they had heard about me, I felt that I could not spend another night under the same roof with them.”
For a moment the vague “something” remained with no demand for an explanation of it, Edward’s silence being due to a dreadful suspicion that whatever the accusation that had been brought against Bonnybell it was in all probability true; Camilla’s to a fear of hearing a fact or facts about her protégée even more shocking than those that had already wounded her ears. But as a shrinking from the disagreeable was certainly no part of Mrs. Tancred’s character, she pulled herself together, and asked brusquely—
“What was it? and was it true?”
“True!” repeated the other in a heart-wrung voice. “Oh, if you, too, are going to believe it!” She threw her hands out before her with a gesture at once of finality and desperation.
“I should have a better chance of disbelieving it if I knew what it was.”
“They received an anonymous letter about me. It came by this evening’s post.”
“H’m!”
“It accused me”—there was worldly wisdom in bringing out the accusation with difficulty; but the difficulty was real too—“the writer said he thought that the man whom I was going to marry ought to know that he had seen me one night last year in Paris at M——’s.”
The confession seemed at first to fall flat; at least, with regard to the person to whom it was directly addressed.
“M——’s!” replied Camilla, with the unconscious ease with which an innocent young girl might pronounce an improper word. “What is M——’s?”