Again Danaë wavered, with confession on her tongue, but a scandalised whisper from Eirene, “Lady Kalliopé, indeed!” turned aside her intention. She drew her hand away from Armitage. “I have told the truth, lord, and it is not believed. Now therefore I will take my little lord and depart from this place.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Wylie sharply. “You have shown pretty plainly that you are not fit to have the charge of a child, and Janni will remain in your mistress’s care. Remember that you are under the very gravest suspicion. Go back to the nursery and try to redeem your character.”
Danaë shot a furious glance at him, and swung through the doorway with a swagger that would not have disgraced her father. This unfortunate experiment in telling at any rate part of the truth had left her absolutely convinced that she was an injured victim, and her employers cruel oppressors, but she was not going to allow them to see that their injustice could make her unhappy. When she was gone Wylie turned to his brother-in-law.
“I am sorry to have taken the words out of your mouth,” he said, “but that girl’s effrontery simply sickens me. You don’t think I was too severe?”
“Not if she was really telling lies,” said Maurice, “and if she wasn’t, she has only herself to thank for our not believing her. And most certainly she must not be allowed to take the other child away. In fact, I don’t know that it wouldn’t be wise to restrict her movements a little—forbid her to leave the upper floor of your house, for instance.”
“No, that wouldn’t do. Don’t you see, if there was any truth in the story that Petros really wanted Janni, he will come back and try to get him? He can’t very well do it without communicating with her, and if she is regularly watched while she imagines herself to be going about freely, we shall catch them both. Zoe, you had better come back and lie down.”
Zoe obeyed submissively, and Armitage went with them, trying to imbue Wylie with his own belief that Kalliopé had really told the truth at last, and they had missed a great opportunity by not recognising the fact and encouraging her to go further. When their voices had died away, Maurice turned to his wife, who was gazing straight before her.
“Eirene, I cannot imagine why you said nothing last night of seeing Kalliopé on the stairs. You can’t really mean that you thought at the time she had a child in her arms.”
“Why not? I thought, as the man Logofet did, that she was going to relieve us of her presence and that child’s, and I was not sorry.”
“But when you heard Harold was lost, it must have struck you——”