“Things seem to have become very unfortunately personal,” said Alice Yorke nervously. “I am sure no one meant——”
Octavia came to the rescue—with the dignity that never had failed to impress any one but the publishers.
“It is unfortunate,” she said. “Of course we were not sure whom Mr. Carruthers meant when he began to speak. And then the subject is a very painful one to us.”
She had not a word of blame for Estelle, she linked herself with her! That I thought would not have happened yesterday.
“We must be excused for feeling keenly, for our brother’s expulsion from college was a very bitter disappointment to him and to us. And, as my sister said, nothing could have been more unlike him than the wrong-doing of which he was accused. So we—we cannot help thinking that there is some mistake, some mystery, especially as we cannot doubt that the woman whom you heard preaching at the race-course was our—our servant, our housekeeper, our friend—Loveday.”
“Loveday? why, it seems like her, but how could it be?” murmured Estelle.
“She had hinted to me that she had some reason for believing that Dave was innocent,” continued Octavia. “When I saw her in the street to-day, I felt that her secret errand was to discover something that would clear Dave. When I knew that she had gone to a race-course and heard what she had said there, I was doubly sure.”
“Dear, sweet, lovely old Loveday!” murmured Estelle, with the tears running down her cheeks. “But what can she have found out?”
“You make me feel more a brute than ever,” said Ned Carruthers ruefully and casting distressed glances at Estelle’s tear-stained face.
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” said Estelle penitently. A gleam of hope was lighting her face like an April sunbeam. “It has been so dreadful to me that people should think such things of Dave and I’ve borne it so long! And it seems like the ruin of his life—only I know that he wouldn’t let it be—nobody but me knows what stuff there is in Dave! He is my own brother and of course I couldn’t bear not to have him at least what every man should be—honest and honorable and—clean. I couldn’t bear even to have Dave smoke—he never did.”