Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/128

 lawyer. Why didn't you explain to me how it would come out—if it does?"

"That's Rinderfeld for you!" Billy countered. "You couldn't have a much better show-up of him; what does he care about the right or wrong of any case? Try to cover up; scrape yourself clear of the consequences; that's Rinderfeld's Bible. He doesn't correct a thing."

"Probably he doesn't," Marjorie admitted. "But he does try to suggest a way in which you may be left alone to settle your own family trouble without the whole world interfering. And I don't believe he thinks I'm trying to scrape out of consequences."

Billy sat away from her, feeling injured and that she had held him cheap; then he saw her face, saw her lips tremble as she tried to steady them, saw her catch herself up bravely, and he was ashamed of himself; he called her name and he caught both her hands between his own big ones.

"Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie, don't you suppose I'd have told you all that, if it could really do you any good? But you'll find out, it won't put off even Stanway! And if it does, it can't save you from facing what's before; and you'll—we'll only make it harder and harder, dearie, by putting it off!"

He drew away one of his hands and hastily pulled down the curtains of the cab and then he put his arm about her and begged her to rest on his shoulder. But she could not. The confidence which she had gained when with Rinderfeld was vanishing. "I'm going to see father now, remember," she reminded Billy.

He had forgotten, though Marjorie had told him, that her given reason for her journey down town to-day