"Then how do you now intend to act?"
"That's just the question I was about to put to you," he said. "There is a distinct peril—one which becomes graver every moment that the girl and young Murie are together. How are we to avert it?"
"By parting them."
"Then act as I suggested the other day. It's the only way, Winnie, depend upon it—the only way to secure our own safety."
"And what would the world say of me, her stepmother, if it were known that I had done such a thing?"
"You've never yet cared for what the world said. Why should you care now? Besides, it never will be known. I should be the only person in the secret, and for my own sake it isn't likely that I'd give you away. Is it? You've trusted me before," he added; "why not again?"
"It would break my husband's heart," she declared in a low, intense voice. "Remember, he is devoted to her. He would never recover from the shock."
"And yet the other night after the ball you said you were prepared to carry out the suggestion, in order to save yourself," he remarked with a covert sneer.
"Perhaps I was piqued that she should defy my suggestion that she should go to the ball."
"No, you were not. You never intended her to go. That you know."