r. But because I believe you are
controlled against your best instinct by that woman, I shall remain
here with you to frustrate her as best I can, or until I am able to lay
everything before Mrs. Peyton except the foolish speech you have just
made."

The young girl laughed. "Why not THAT one too, while you're about it?
See what she'll say."

"I shall tell her," continued Clarence calmly, "only what YOU yourself
have made it necessary for me to tell her to save you from folly and
disgrace, and only enough to spare her the mortification of hearing it
first from her own servants."

"Hearing WHAT from her own servants? What do you mean? How dare you?"
demanded the young girl sharply.

She was quite real in her anxiety now, although her attitude of virtuous
indignation struck him as being like all her emotional expression,
namely, acting.

"I mean that the servants know of your correspondence with Mrs.
McClosky, and that she claims to be your aunt," returned Clarence. "They
know that you confided to Pepita. They believe that either Mrs. McClosky
or you have seen"--

He had stopped suddenly. He was about to say that the servants
(particularly Incarnacion) knew that Pedro had boasted of having met
Susy, when, for the first time, the tremendous significance of what he
had hitherto considered as merely an idle falsehood flashed upon him.

"Seen whom?" repeated Susy in a higher voice, impatiently stamping her
foot.

Clarence looked at her, and in her excited, questioning face saw a
confirmation of his still half-formed suspicions. In his own abrupt
pause and knitted eyebrows she must have read his thoughts also. Their
eyes met. Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shifted
as she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference,
almost grotesque in its unreality. His eyes slowly turned to the window,
the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and then
came back to her face again. Then he drew a deep breath.

"I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy," he said slowly.
"I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than an
act of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice. Neither
do I want to appeal to you or frighten you, but I must tell you now,
that I know certain facts that might make such a simple act of folly
monstrous, inconceivable in YOU, and almost accessory to a crime! I can
tell you no more. But so satisfied am I of such