tongues!"

"I wish I could think so, Meg."

Meg swung round on him and for a moment he thought she was going to
strike him.

"Damn you!" She flashed out the words just as he himself would have
said them. "How dare you say so? He is your friend, he has been
closer to you than a brother! He has no one to defend his name! You
know that he would kill any man who attempted to slander you behind
your back!"

Freddy did not resent her attack. She had done just what he would have
done to any man who had reported any slander against her fair name.

"I know it's awfully hard for you to believe it."

"I don't believe it, Freddy, nor do you!"

"I told you I wished I didn't. The evidence is too clear."

"You haven't told me that you believe it is true. You can't get beyond
the fact that there's ugly gossip going round and that I'm in love with
him. If you thought this was your dying oath, that heaven depended
upon the truth of your statement, can you say that in your soul you
believe that Michael has taken this woman with him, that he is utterly
treacherous and faithless? Does your unconquerable voice condemn him?"

Freddy thought for a moment. "It looks very black, Meg. The evidence
is very convincing."

"Confound the evidence!" she said. "That is not an answer. I asked
you, does your inner self, your super-man, believe absolutely in his
guilt?" Meg was staring at him with hard, questioning eyes; all trace
of her love for him had been driven out.

"Well no, if you put it like that, perhaps not. But I can't have your
name connected with these stories."

"My name?" she cried. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that our women have married straight, clean, honourable men."

"The Lamptons again!" she said. "Am I never to be free from tradition?
Just because I'm a Lampton, I am to behave in a mean, disloyal manner
to the man I swore to trust? Do you suppose I'm going to? If you do,
you're much mistaken. In my own heart I've been Michael's wife for
weeks and weeks, so you needn't imagine I'm going to divorce him."

"But I do, Meg." Freddy rose from the table. "Now, look here," he
said, "try to speak dispassionately. How can I, as your sole male
guardian, countenance an engagement between you and Michael while there
is only too much ground for belief that this story is true? I've not
only heard it from the natives."

"You're wholly without reason. You just said you didn't believe it!"
The words flash