"I don't say that's all, nor that that's it. I don't want you should go upon that idea. I just thought, may be--you hadn't thought of it."
"No, I certainly hadn't thought of it! Such a thing would have been so impossible to me that I couldn't have thought of it; and it's so shocking to me now that I don't know what to say to it."
"Well, don't take it too much to heart," said Lapham, alarmed at the feeling he had excited; "I don't say she thought so. I was trying to guess--trying to----"
"If there is anything I can say or do to convince you----"
"Oh, it ain't necessary to say anything. I'm all right."
"But Miss Lapham! I may see her again? I may try to convince her that----"
He stopped in distress, and Lapham afterwards told his wife that he kept seeing the face of Irene as it looked when he parted with her in the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his lips. At the same time he could not help feeling that Penelope had a right to what was her own, and Sewell's words came back to him. Besides, they had already put Irene to the worst suffering. Lapham compromised, as he imagined. "You can come round to-night and see ME, if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the young man poured out upon him.
Penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place at the head of the table.
Lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it. Then he asked, "How do you feel to-night, Pen?"
"Oh, like a thief," said the girl. "A thief that hasn't been arrested yet."