Claire paused.  “Mary, how could you have played such a trick upon me?”

“I had no thought of doing you any harm,” I replied.  “I was simply trying to help Sylvia.”

“To help her at any expense!”

“Tell me, what will come of it?  Are you afraid they’ll cut off your allowance?”

“That’s the threat.”

“But will they carry it out?”

She sat, gazing at me resentfully.  “I don’t know whether I ought to trust you any more,” she said.

“Do what you please about that,” I replied.  “I don’t want to urge you.”

She hesitated a bit longer, and then decided to throw herself upon my mercy.  They would not dare to carry out their threat, so long as Sylvia had not found out the whole truth.  So now she had come to beg me to tell no more than I had already told.  She was utterly abject about it.  I had pretended to be her friend, I had won her confidence and listened to her confessions; how did I wish to ruin her utterly, to have her cast out on the street?

Poor Claire!  I said in the early part of my story that she understood the language of idealism; but I wonder what I have told about her that justifies this.  The truth is, she was going down so fast that already she seemed a different person; and she had been frightened by the thin-lipped old family lawyer, so that she was incapable of even a decent pretence.

“Claire,” I said, “there is no need for you to go on like this.  I have not the slightest intention of telling Sylvia about you.  I cannot imagine the circumstances that would make me want to tell her.  Even if I should do it, I would tell her in confidence, so that her husband would never have any idea——­”

She went almost wild at this.  To imagine that a woman would keep such a confidence!  As if she would not throw it at her husband’s head the first time they quarreled!  Besides, if Sylvia knew this truth, she might leave him; and if she left him, Claire’s hold on his money would be gone.

Over this money we had a long and lachrymose interview.  And at the end of it, there she sat gazing into space, baffled and bewildered.  What kind of a woman was I?  How had I got to be the friend of Sylvia van Tuiver?  What had she seen in me, and what did I expect to get out of her?  I answered briefly; and suddenly Claire was overwhelmed by a rush of curiosity—­plain human curiosity.  What was Sylvia like?  Was she as clever as they said?  What was the baby like, and how was Sylvia taking the misfortune?  Could it really be true that I had been visiting the van Tuivers in Florida, as old Rossiter Torrance had implied?

Needless to say, I did not answer these questions freely.  And I really think my visitor was more pained by my uncommunicativeness than she was by my betrayal of her.  It was interesting also to notice a subtle difference in her treatment of me.  Gone was the slight touch of condescension, gone was most of the familiarity!  I had become a personage, a treasurer of high state secrets, an intimate of the great ones!  There must be something more to me than Claire had realized before!