“No,” said Welsh, impatiently. “If you will act as Jingles has suggested, this will never be known. He is back at Orleigh, or will be there this afternoon, and you will be at Portland Place, where your maid will find you. What more natural than that you should return to-morrow home, on account of your father’s death? As for the society papers—if they get an inkling of the real facts—I am connected with the press. I can snuff the light out. There are ways and means. Leave that to me.”
“But, Mr. Welsh, suppose that suspicion has been roused at Orleigh—Mrs. Cribbage has to be considered. That woman will not leave a stone unturned till she has routed out everything. I used to say that was why the finger ends were always out of her gloves. I would have to equivocate, and perhaps to lie, when asked point-blank questions which if answered would betray the truth. I would be putting my dear step-mother to the same inconvenience and humiliation.”
“Trust her wit and knowledge of the world to evade Mrs. Cribbage.”
“But I cannot. I have not the wit.”
Mr. Welsh was vexed, he stamped impatiently.
“I can’t follow you in this,” he said.
“Well, Mr. Welsh, then perhaps you may in what I give you as my next reason. I feel bound morally to take the consequences of my act. When a wretched girl flings herself over London Bridge, perhaps she feels a spasm of regret for the life she is throwing away, as the water closes over her, but she drowns all the same.”
“Not at all, when there are boats put forth to the rescue, and hands extended to haul her in.”
“To rescue her for what?—To be brought before a magistrate, and to have her miserable story published in the daily penny papers. Why, Mr. Welsh, her friends regret that her body was not rolled down into the deep sea, or smothered under a bed of Thames mud; that were better than the publication of her infamy.”
“What will you have?”