“You were quite right. It would indeed,” Jim agreed cordially.
Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the back of Jim Frobisher’s mind that this girl had been a trifle hard in her treatment of Boris Waberski. He was a sponger, a wastrel, with no real claim upon her, it was true. On the other hand, he had no means of livelihood, and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune, had been content to endure and support him. Now, however, the suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the girl removed and by her own frankness.
“Then it is all over,” Betty said, handing back the letters to Jim with a sigh of relief. Then she smiled ruefully—“But just for a little while I was really frightened,” she confessed. “You see, I was sent for and questioned by the examining magistrate. Oh! I wasn’t frightened by the questions, but by him, the man. I’ve no doubt it’s his business to look severe, but I couldn’t help thinking that if anyone looked as terrifically severe as he did, it must be because he hadn’t any brains and wanted you not to know. And people without brains are always dangerous, aren’t they?”
“Yes, that wasn’t encouraging,” Jim agreed.
“Then he forbade me to use a motorcar, as if he expected me to run away. And to crown everything, when I came away from the Palais de Justice, I met some friends outside who gave me a long list of people who had been condemned and only found to be innocent when it was too late.”
Jim stared at her.
“The brutes!” he cried.
“Well, we have all got friends like that,” Betty returned philosophically. “Mine, however, were particularly odious. For they actually discussed, as a reason of course, why I should engage the very best advocate, whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the charge couldn’t be made one of matricide. In which case there could be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with a black veil over my head and naked feet.” She saw horror and indignation in Jim Frobisher’s face and she reached out a hand to him.
“Yes. Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt, though”—and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper and contemplated it whimsically—“I don’t imagine that, given the circumstances, I should be bothering my head much as to whether I was wearing my best shoes and stockings or none at all.”
“I never heard of so abominable a suggestion,” cried Jim.
“You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a little rattled,” continued Betty, “and why I sent off that silly panicky telegram. I would have recalled it when I rose to the surface again. But it was then too late. The telegram had—”
She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflection and a sharp indraw of her breath.
“Who is that?” she asked in a changed voice. She had been speaking quietly and slowly, with an almost humorous appreciation of the causes of her fear. Now her question was uttered quickly and anxiety was predominant in her voice. “Yes, who is that?” she repeated.
A big, heavily built man sauntering past the great iron gates had suddenly whipped into the courtyard. A fraction of a second before he was an idler strolling along the path, now he was already disappearing under the big glass fan of the porch.
“It’s Hanaud,” Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet as though a spring in her had been released, and stood swaying.
“You have nothing to fear from Hanaud,” Jim Frobisher reassured her. “I have shown him those two letters of Waberski. From first to last he is your friend. Listen. This is what he said to me only yesterday in Paris.”
“Yesterday, in Paris?” Betty asked suddenly.
“Yes, I called upon him at the Sûrété. These were his words. I remembered them particularly so that I could repeat them to you just as they were spoken. ‘Your little client can lay her pretty head upon her pillow confident that no injustice will be done to her.’ ”
The bell of the front door shrilled through the house as Jim finished.
“Then why is he in Dijon? Why is he at the door now?” Betty asked stubbornly.
But that was the one question which Jim must not answer. He had received a confidence from Hanaud. He had pledged his word not to betray it. For a little while longer Betty must believe that Waberski’s accusation against her was the true reason of Hanaud’s presence in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.
“Hanaud acts under orders,” Jim returned. “He is here because he was bidden to come”; and to his relief the answer sufficed. In truth, Betty’s thoughts were diverted to some problem to which he had not the key.
“So you called upon Monsieur Hanaud in Paris,” she said, with a warm smile. “You have forgotten nothing which could help me.” She laid a hand upon the sill of the open window. “I hope that he felt all the flattery of my panic-stricken telegram to London.”
“He was simply regretful that you should have been so distressed.”
“So you showed him the telegram?”
“And he destroyed it. It was my excuse for calling upon him with the letters.”
Betty sat down again on the window-seat and lifted a finger for silence. Outside the door voices were speaking. Then the door was opened and the old manservant entered. He carried this time no card upon a salver, but he was obviously impressed and a trifle flustered.
“Mademoiselle,” he began, and Betty interrupted him. All trace of anxiety had gone from her manner. She was once more mistress of herself.
“I know, Gaston. Show Monsieur Hanaud in at once.”
But Monsieur Hanaud was already in. He bowed with a pleasant ceremony to Betty Harlowe and shook hands cordially with Jim Frobisher.
“I was delighted as I came through the court, Mademoiselle, to see that my
