“What made you so sure?” asked Mamie.
“How can I tell you?” I cried. “We had been all through her. We WERE sure; that's all that I can say.”
“I begin to think you were,” she returned, with a significant emphasis.
Jim hurriedly intervened. “What I don't quite make out, Loudon, is that you don't seem to appreciate the peculiarities of the thing,” said he. “It doesn't seem to have struck you same as it does me.”
“Pshaw! why go on with this?” cried Mamie, suddenly rising. “Mr. Dodd is not telling us either what he thinks or what he knows.”
“Mamie!” cried Jim.
“You need not be concerned for his feelings, James; he is not concerned for yours,” returned the lady. “He dare not deny it, besides. And this is not the first time he has practised reticence. Have you forgotten that he knew the address, and did not tell it you until that man had escaped?”
Jim turned to me pleadingly—we were all on our feet. “Loudon,” he said, “you see Mamie has some fancy; and I must say there's just a sort of a shadow of an excuse; for it IS bewildering—even to me, Loudon, with my trained business intelligence. For God's sake, clear it up.”
“This serves me right,” said I. “I should not have tried to keep you in the dark; I should have told you at first that I was pledged to secrecy; I should have asked you to trust me in the beginning. It is all I can do now. There is more of the story, but it concerns none of us, and my tongue is tied. I have given my word of honour. You must trust me and try to forgive me.”
“I daresay I am very stupid, Mr. Dodd,” began Mamie, with an alarming sweetness, “but I thought you went upon this trip as my husband's representative and with my husband's money? You tell us now that you are pledged, but I should have thought you were pledged first of all to James. You say it does not concern us; we are poor people, and my husband is sick, and it concerns us a great deal to understand how we come to have lost our money, and why our representative comes back to us with nothing. You ask that we should trust you; you do not seem to understand; the question we are asking ourselves is whether we have not trusted you too much.”