en altogether ingenious, a mask
manufactured in anticipation of just this development.

No, it wasn't likely of Trego. She could not overlook the impression
he conveyed of rugged honesty and straightforwardness. However strong
the aversion he inspired, Sally could ignore neither that impression
nor yet its correlative, that if he was not an over-righteous scorner
of lies, he was the sort that would suffer much rather than seek to
profit by a lie.

She perceived, with a little qualm of contrition, that she had
been eager to condemn the man out of sheer unreasonable prejudice, all
too ready to do him injustice in her thoughts. Unpleasant though she
found his personality, harshly though his crudities grated upon her
sensibilities, she owed him gratitude for an intimate service in an
emergency when she had been only too glad of his personal
intervention; and it were rank ingratitude to wish him ill, just as it
was frankly base of her to be eager to think ill of him.

Repentance had got hold of this girl by the nape of her neck; it shook
her roughly, if justly. For a little time she cringed in shame of
herself and was torn by desire in some way to make amends to this
animal of a Trego, whom she so despised because he refused to play up
to the snob in her and ape the manners of his putative betters even as
she was keen to ape them.

Perhaps it had needed this ugly happening, or something as unsettling,
to reveal the girl to herself in a true light--at least a light less
flattering than she found pleasant.

Certainly its aftermath in the way of private communion served well to
sober and humble Sally in her own esteem. Outside the immediate field
of her reverie she was now conscious of the words "sycophant" and
"parasite" buzzing like mosquitoes about the head of some frantic
wooer of sleep, elusive, pitiless, exasperating, making it just
so much more difficult to concentrate upon this importunate problem of
her duty.

If she was not to protest her own innocence, what ought she to say
upon that card?

Was it consistent with loyalty to Mrs. Gosnold to keep silence about
matters that might clear up the mystery and repair the wrong-doing?

But how could she attack another? How bring herself to point the
finger of accusation at Lyttleton?

On the terrace outside her window a stringed orchestra tuned and
hummed softly in the perfumed night. Rumour of gay voices and light
laughter came to her in ever greater volume. Befor