laughter? Appear in the docks?' she
quavered, her frightened brown eyes large and round.

'I don't think it would come to that. All you have to do is to tell your
parents. Your father is responsible for the stuff in the papers, and your
mother, I gather, for the spreading of the story personally. Your
confession to them would stop that. They would withdraw, retract what
they have said, and say publicly that they were mistaken, that the
evidence they thought they had, had been proved false. Then it would be
generally assumed again that the thing was an accident, and the talk
would die down. No one need ever know but your parents and myself. I am
bound, and they would choose, not to repeat it to any one.'

'Not to Jane?' she questioned.

'Well, what does Jane think at present? Does she suspect?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. Jane's been rather queer all day....
I've sometimes thought she suspected something. Only if she did, I
believe she'd have told me. Jane doesn't consider people's feelings, you
know; she'd say anything, however awful.... Only she's deep, too. Not
like me. I must have things out; she'll keep them dark, sometimes.... No,
I don't know what Jane thinks, really I don't.'

I didn't know either. Another thing I didn't know was what Gideon
thought. They might both suspect Clare, and this might have tied Gideon's
hands; he might have shrunk from defending himself at the expense of a
frightened, unhappy girl and Jane's sister.

But this wasn't my business.

'Well,' I said, 'you may find you have to tell Jane. Perhaps, in a way,
you owe it to Jane to tell her. But the essential thing is that you
should tell your parents. That's quite necessary, of course. And you
should do it at once--this evening, directly you get home. Every minute
lost makes the thing worse. I think you should catch the next train back
to Potter's Bar. You see, what you say may affect what is in to-morrow
morning's papers. This thing has to be stopped at once, before further
damage is done.'

She looked at me palely, her hands twisting convulsively in and out of
each other. I saw her, for all her seven or eight-and-twenty years, as a
weak, frightened child, ignorant, like a child, of the mischief she was
doing to others, concerned, like a child, with her own troubles and fears
and the burden on her own conscience. I was inclined now to believe in
that push.

'Oh,' she whimpered, 'I _daren't_.... All this time I've said
nothin