Polly eyed her ex-mistress shrewdly.

“Have you burnt the note?” she asked.

Dorothea, blushing to the roots of her hair, stammered: 

“No; I kept it—­it was evidence for him, you see.  I wish, now—­”

She broke off as Polly nodded her head.

“I guessed you’d have kept it.  And now you’ll never make up your mind to burn it.  You’re too honest.”

“But, surely the note itself would not be called for?”

“I don’t know.  Folks ask curious questions in courts of law, I’ve always heard.  Beggin’ your pardon, Miss, but your face tells too many tales, and anyone but a fool would ask for that note before he’d been dealing with you three minutes.  If he didn’t, he’d ask you what was in it.  And then you’d be forced to tell lies—­which you couldn’t, to save your soul!”

Dorothea knew this to be true.  She reflected a moment.  “I should decline to show it, or to answer.”

Mrs. Zeally thought it about time to assert herself.  “Very good, Miss.  And now, how about me?  They’d ask me questions, too; and I’d have you consider, Miss Dorothea, that though not shaken down to it yet—­not, as you might say, in a state to expect callers or make them properly welcome—­I’m a respectable married woman.  I don’t mind confessing to you, Zeally isn’t a comfortable man.  He’s pleased enough to be sergeant, though he don’t quite know how it came about; and he’s that sullen with brooding over it, that for sixpence he’d give me the strap to ease his feelings.  I ain’t complaining.  Mr. Endymion chose to take me on the hop and hurry up the banns, and I’m going to accommodate myself to the man.  He’s three-parts of a fool, and you needn’t fear but I’ll manage him.  But I ain’t for taking no risks, and that I tell you fair.”

Dorothea was stunned.  “You don’t mean to say that Zeally suspects you?”

“Why, of course he does!” said Polly.  Prudence urged her to repeat that Zeally was three-parts of a fool; but, being nettled, she spoke the words uppermost:  “Who d’ee think he’d suspect?”

Dorothea, however, was too desperately dejected to feel the prick of this shaft.  “You will not help me, then?” was all her reply to it.

“Why, no, Miss! if you put it in that point-blank way.  A married woman’s got to think of her reputation first of all.”

Polly’s attitude might be selfish, unfeeling; but the fundamental incapacity for gratitude in girls of Polly’s class will probably surprise and pain their mistresses until the end of the world.  After all, Polly was right.  An attempt to clear Raoul by telling the superficial truth must involve terrible risks, and might at any turn enforce a choice between full confession and falsehood.

Dorothea could not bring herself to lie, even heroically; and there would be no heroism in lying to save herself.  On the other hand, the thought of a forced confession—­it might he before a tribunal—­was too hideous.  No, the suggestion had been a mad one, and Polly had rightly thrown cold water on it.  Also, it had demanded too much of Polly, who could not be expected to jeopardise her matrimonial prospects to right a wrong for which she was not in truth responsible.