CHAPTER III
HERRICK GUESSES AT THE MYSTERY AND GETS IN SOMETHING'S WAY
The light in the little tea-room was rather dim. Christina spread out Herrick's copies of the two blackmailing letters upon the table and studied them, propping her chin on her hands. Herrick, in surrendering them, had dreaded the squalid clutch which they laid upon herself. But when she lifted her eyes it was to say—"We must never let them credit this trash about Nancy!"
"None of it, then—?"
"Not a syllable! Not a breath!—Jim! Little she cared for Jim, poor child! She was unhappy, but not with that unhappiness. It's true her only love-affair had come to grief. That's what my mother means by calling her secretive—even I have never been able to get out of her what happened to it. But disgrace—run away! Disgrace could never have looked at her, and never in her life did she run away from anything! And if she were alive and free, anywhere upon this earth, the first word against me would have brought her back. She would butt walls down, with her little red head, to stand by a friend's side!"
"That's what my sister says. It's odd!"
"Odd?"
"I mean—Well, there's the circumstance that the hour when she called on Ingham was the hour when the ribbon was to have signaled from the window. And she didn't give her name, you know; she said, 'The lady he expects.' Then one remembers that this mysterious woman who passed Joe had red hair. Joe says she had on a white lace dress, Miss Hope—well, Miss Cornish was in white with lace trimming. He mistook her for you. Still, he was very sleepy, and though she's not so tall as you are, she's not short, and she's very slender, too. Forgive me for making you impatient. But the boy's devoted to you, isn't he?"
"I suppose so," Christina ingenuously replied.
"Well, he knows, now, that Nancy Cornish is your dear friend. I can't altogether rely upon his not recognizing her photograph."