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up--after dinner."
Flaxman patrolled the room a little, in meditation. Finally he stopped before his wife.
"You must realize, darling, that we may be all walking on the edge of a volcano to-night."
"If only Henry Barron were!--and I might be behind to give the last little chiquenade!" cried Rose.
Flaxman devoutly echoed the wish.
"But the point is--are there any more of these letters out? If so, we may hear of others to-night. Then--what to do? Do I make straight for Meynell?"
They pondered it.
"Impossible to leave Meynell in ignorance," said Flaxman--"if the thing spreads Meynell of course would be perfectly justified--in his ward's interests--in denying the whole matter absolutely, true or no. But can he?--with Barron in reserve--using the Sabin woman's tale for his own purposes?"
Catharine's face, a little sternly set, showed the obscure conflict behind.
"He cannot say what is false," she said stiffly. "But he can refuse to answer."
Flaxman looked at her with an expression as confident as her own.
"To protect a woman, my dear Catharine--a man may say anything in the world--almost."
Catharine made no reply, but her quiet face showed she did not agree with him.
"That child Hester!" Rose emerged suddenly from a mental voyage of recollection and conjecture. "Now one understands why Lady Fox-Wilton--stupid woman!--has never seemed to care a rap for her. It must indeed be annoying to have to mother a child so much handsomer than your own."
"I think I am very sorry for Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton," said Catharine, after a moment.
Rose assented.
"Yes!--just an ordinary dull, pig-headed country gentleman confronted with a situation that only occurs in plays to which you don't demean yourself by going!--and obliged to tell and act a string of lies, when lies happen to be just one of the vices you're not inclined to! And then afterward you find yourself let in for living years and years with a bad conscience