Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/136

 "Not even to me." She had nearly said, "Not to me, of all people."

"Well, I can't help feeling that if your evidence had been different"

"It couldn't have been different," Miss Ricardo cut her short.

"Why, no, I suppose not, or you wouldn't have given it," Maud said, glancing at the other with a kind of childlike slyness, from under her long eyelashes. "Strange, how we were speaking of Major Smedley before we knew that Milly was—dead. And then, that he should have come down."

"Wicked old busybody!" Terry could not help exclaiming.

"You believe he volunteered his evidence just to get himself mixed up with a cause célèbre."

"Of course. And in the hope of doing Ian—Sir Ian—harm, in some way or other. When he saw that I was in the room, he thought of a way." Terry spoke half to herself.

"Has he a grudge against Ian?" All Maud's curiosity was awake.

"Oh, merely the grudge he has against every man who isn't a coward. Cowards are civil to him, because they re afraid of what he may do or say, just as people fear a vicious cat. Men and women who aren't cowards can't be civil to creatures like that. It only encourages them in their blackmailing career."