"I point with pride, gentlemen, to the conviction of Lawrence Challoner. That's all I have to say."
The fiasco had helped Murgatroyd infinitely more than it had hurt him, Thorne felt in his inmost soul. For once the masses refused to believe what on its face appeared to be true.
One evening a few weeks later, while Murgatroyd was dressing to dine at his club, as was his custom nearly every night, his servant handed him a note which the bearer had said was to be delivered immediately. It was but seldom that a square white envelope came at this time, and with a pardonable look of surprise and curiosity on his face Murgatroyd opened it and read:
"I must see you. Will you come to the house to-night?
"S. H. B."
An hour more, and he was in Mrs. Bloodgood's drawing-room, waiting more nervously than he would have cared to acknowledge to himself for the daughter of the house to appear. It was the first time that she had ever sent for him to go to her, and he was conscious of some degree of anxiety as to her motive. Clever lawyer though he was, he dreaded her catechising, particularly so, because he knew that whether she acknowledged it to herself or not, that it was at her instigation that he had adopted the rôle which, with or without her approval, he was now determined to play through to the end. The sound of a light step on the threshold of the room checked his disturbing speculations, and he looked up to see Shirley Bloodgood entering the room. As usual she did not permit him to open the conversation after the preliminary courtesies of greeting between them.
"Something very urgent made me send for you, Mr. Murgatroyd," she began, but her lips trembled so that she stopped abruptly after adding: "I want to talk with you."
An instinct told Murgatroyd that it would be a grievous mistake not to accept without a protesting word the note of aloofness, the desire to avoid any suggestion of former intimacy that was in her tone. Rightly he told himself that the slightest advances on his part would result in adding to her distress; that however much he would like to break down the barrier that had arisen between them, he must bide his time and trust to her emotional nature to accomplish that. And he was not mistaken, for presently an impulse to speak her mind at any cost took possession of her, and she burst forth:—
"Billy, why did you take this money? Why?..."
Carried away by the tender accents with which she pronounced his name, Murgatroyd essayed to speak, but she interrupted him.