ht here on false pretences."

"I didn't know how she was going to work this thing," Miss Jewett
protested hastily. "If I had, I wouldn't----"

"It does not matter," Angelo said.

"But it does matter. Everything matters," Marie broke in, her quiet,
alert, almost businesslike tone a surprise to her friend. "Don't send
them away yet, Angelo--in justice to me. I know you don't believe things
against me--of course not. Perhaps you would not believe, even if they
could seem to prove anything, which they couldn't do. Things that aren't
true can't be proved really, by the most cruel and malicious people. But
maybe if you sent Miss Bland and her detective friend out of the house
now, you might sometimes think of what you've heard, in spite of
yourself--in the night, when dreadful thoughts seem almost true--and
that would kill me. Besides, these women might spread tales. And that
would distress your father. I must justify myself--not in your eyes;
that isn't needed; but in theirs. I must do it--even at the awful
expense of sacrificing another. Two names very much alike have made this
mischief. Angelo, it was Mary Grant who was at that convent-school in
Scotland, where Miss Jewett must have been spying for your cousin. I'd
have saved poor Mary if I could. But you come first with me--first,
before everything and every one. Ask her if what I say of her is not the
truth."

Mary turned and looked at her friend. She was very still. Her heart,
which had pounded in her bosom, moving the laces of her blouse, might
almost have ceased beating. She appeared hardly to breathe. But through
her large, soft eyes her soul seemed to pour itself out in a crystalline
ray, piercing to the soul of Marie. And to the woman who had used the
heart of her friend for a shield came a sudden and terrible thought. She
remembered a passage in the Gospels where Judas led the Roman soldiers
by night to the garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus, speaking no word,
turned and looked at the betrayer. It was as if she saw a picture of
this betrayal, beside the picture of herself leaning forward in the red
hammock, with Angelo beside her and Mary's clear eyes questioning hers.
She could have cried out aloud, and falling on her knees have confessed
everything, begging God's forgiveness and Angelo's and Mary's. But
instead, because she clung to this one desperate hope of keeping Angelo,
she sat erect and firm, her ice-cold hands tightly grasping the edge of
the hammock, on