“I want you to fib for me,” she said.  “You know the way the men stick together....  Well, the women have to do it, too....  At dinner yesterday,” she continued, “Wally happened to ask me where I was going that evening, and I told him I was coming over to see you.  And really, dear, I meant it at the time.  Instead, a little crowd of us happened to get together and we went to the club.

“Well, that was all right.  But it was nearly twelve when I got home, and he looked so miserable that I hated to tell him that I had been off enjoying myself, so I pretended I had been over to see you.”

Mary blinked at the inference, but was too breathless, too alarmed to speak.

“He asked me if I got to your house early,” resumed Helen, “and I said, ‘Oh, about eight.’  And then he said, ‘What time did you leave Mary’s?’ and I said, ‘Oh, about half-past eleven.’

“Of course, I thought everything was all right, but I could tell from something he said this morning that he didn’t believe me.  So if he calls you up, tell him that I was over at your house last night—­will you?—­there’s a dear—­”

“But I can’t,” said Mary, more breathless, more alarmed than ever.  “Wally was over himself last night—­and, oh, Helen, now I know!  He was listening for your car every minute!”

Helen stared ... and then suddenly she laughed—­a laugh that had no mirth in it—­that sound, half bitter, half mocking, which is sometimes used as ironical applause for ironical circumstance.

“I guess I can square it up somehow,” she said.  “I’ll drop in and see Burdon for a few minutes.”

Before her cousin knew it, she was gone.

“I’ll speak to her when she comes out,” Mary told herself, but while she was trying to decide what to say, the morning mail was placed on her desk and the routine of the day began.  Half an hour later she heard the sound of Helen’s car rolling away.

“She went without saying good-bye,” thought Mary.  “Oh, well, I’ll see her again before long.”

To her own surprise the events of the last few days worried her less than she expected.  For one reason, she had lived long enough to notice that no matter how involved things may look, Time has an astonishing faculty of straightening them out.  And for another reason, having two worries to think about, each one tended to take her mind off the other.

Whenever she started thinking about the accountant’s report, she presently found herself wondering how Helen proposed to square it up with Wally.

“Oh, well,” she thought again, realizing the futility of trying to read the future, “let’s hope everything will come out right in the end....  It always has, so far....”

Archey came in toward noon, and Mary went with him to inspect a colony of bungalows which she was having built on the heights by the side of the lake.