“Oh, I am afraid I was willing to tell it to all kinds of people--to any kind that would listen.”
“You are trying to evade me, Mr. Hewson,” she said, with a severity he found charming. “I didn’t expect that of you.”
The appeal was not lost upon Hewson. “What do you want me to say?”
“I want you,” said Miss Hernshaw, with an effect of giving him another trial, “to say--to acknowledge that you were terribly annoyed by that interview.”
“If you will excuse me from attaching the slightest blame to you for it, I will acknowledge that I was annoyed.”
Miss Hernshaw drew a deep breath as of relief. “I will arrange about the blame,” she said loftily. “And now I wish to tell you how I never supposed that girl was an interviewer. We were all together at an artist’s house in Rome, and after dinner, we got to telling ghost-stories, the way people do, around the fire, and I told mine--yours I mean. And before we broke up, this girl came to me--it was while we were putting on our wraps--and introduced herself, and said how much she had been impressed by my story--of course, I mean your story--and she said she supposed it was made up. I said I should not dream of making up a thing of that kind, and that it was every word true, and I had heard the person it happened to tell it himself. I don’t know! I was vain of having heard it, so, at first hand.”
“And then I told her who the person was, and where it happened--and about the burglary. You can’t imagine how silly people get when they begin going in that direction.”
“She seemed very grateful somehow; I couldn’t see why, but I didn’t ask; and then I didn’t think about it again till I saw it in that awful newspaper. She sent it to me herself; she was such a simpleton; she thought I would actually like to see it. She must have written it down, and sent it to the paper, and they printed it when they got ready to; she needed the money, I suppose. Then I began to wonder what you would say, when you remembered how I blamed you for telling the same story--only not half so bad--at that dinner.”
“I always felt you were quite right,” said Hewson. “I have always thanked you in my own mind for being so frank with me.”
“Well, and what do you think now, when you know that I was ten times as bad as you--ten times as foolish and vulgar!”