me as they also must). But
it's she who's the real reason--I mean of his holding off. She poisons
the air he breathes."

"Oh well," said Mr. Pitman, with easy optimism, "if Mrs. George
Maule's a cat--!"

"If she's a cat she has kittens--four little spotlessly white ones,
among whom she'd give her head that Mr. French should make his pick.
He could do it with his eyes shut--you can't tell them apart. But she
has every name, every date, as you may say, for my dark 'record'--as
of course they all call it: she'll be able to give him, if he brings
himself to ask her, every fact in its order. And all the while, don't
you see? there's no one to speak _for_ me."

It would have touched a harder heart than her loose friend's to note
the final flush of clairvoyance witnessing this assertion and under
which her eyes shone as with the rush of quick tears. He stared at
her, and at what this did for the deep charm of her prettiness, as
in almost witless admiration. "But can't you--lovely as you are, you
beautiful thing!--speak for yourself?"

"Do you mean can't I tell the lies? No, then, I can't--and I wouldn't
if I could. I don't lie myself, you know--as it happens; and it could
represent to him then about the only thing, the only bad one, I don't
do. I _did_--'lovely as I am'!--have my regular time; I wasn't so
hideous that I couldn't! Besides, do you imagine he'd come and ask
me?"

"Gad, I wish he would, Julia!" said Mr. Pitman, with his kind eyes on
her.

"Well then, I'd tell him!" And she held her head again high. "But he
won't."

It fairly distressed her companion. "Doesn't he want, then, to
know--?"

"He wants _not_ to know. He wants to be told without asking--told,
I mean, that each of the stories, those that have come to him, is a
fraud and a libel. _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_, don't they say?--so that
do you see me breaking out to him, unprovoked, with four or five
what-do-you-call-'ems, the things mother used to have to prove in
court, a set of neat little 'alibis' in a row? How can I get hold of
so _many_ precious gentlemen, to turn them on? How can _they_ want
everything fished up?"

She paused for her climax, in the intensity of these considerations;
which gave Mr. Pitman a chance to express his honest faith. "Why, my
sweet child, they'd be just glad--!"

It determined in her loveliness almost a sudden glare. "Glad to swear
they never had anything to do with such a creature? Then _I'd_ be glad
to swear they h