But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the corridor, and shut the door behind her.  Her face was full of determination.

“No,” said she, “not even you.”

Max drew himself up, offended.

“I should think you might trust me,” he said, stiffly.  “The doctor will have to hear when he comes.  And the secret, whatever it is, will be safer with me than with old Haselden.”

Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.

“The doctor,” said she, “wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of what he says.  Now, you would.”

“And if I did, what of that?  Don’t I know everything, or almost everything, already?  Didn’t I bring him down here, to my father’s house, after I knew that there was a warrant out against him?  What better proof do you want that the secret would be safe with me?”

But Carrie would not give way.  Without entering into an argument, she stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes, slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his persuasions.

“Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?” asked Max, impatiently.

“Oh, no.”

“Do you think it would turn me against him?”

But at this question she hesitated.

“I don’t know,” said she, at last.

“It is something that has given you pain?” Max went on, noting the traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.

“Yes, oh, yes.”

The answer was given in a very low voice, with such a heart-felt sob that Max was touched to the quick.  He came quite close to her, and, bending down, so that his mustache almost brushed the soft fair hair on her forehead, he whispered: 

“I’m so sorry.  Poor Carrie!  I won’t worry you, then; I won’t ask any more questions, if only—­if only you’ll let me tell you how awfully sorry I am.”

He ventured to put his hand upon her shoulder, as he bent down to look into her face.

And, as luck would have it, Mr. Wedmore at that very moment bounced out of one of the rooms which opened on the corridor, and caught sight of this pretty little picture before it broke up.

Of course, Max withdrew his hand and lifted up his head so swiftly that he flattered himself he had been too quick for his father, who walked along the corridor toward the drawing-room as if he had seen nothing.

But Max was mistaken.  Mr. Wedmore, already greatly irritated by his son’s repeated failures to settle down, found in this little incident a pretext for a fresh outburst of wrath.

Unluckily for poor Carrie, Mrs. Wedmore was in a state of irritation, in which she was even readier than usual to agree with her husband.  The arrival of Dudley, with a terrible charge hanging over his head, in such circumstances as to stir up Doreen’s feelings for him to the utmost, was bad enough.  But for him to descend upon them in the company of a young woman of whom she had never heard, and in whose alleged relationship to Dudley she entirely disbelieved, had reduced the poor lady to a state which Queenie succinctly described as “one of mamma’s worst.”