[Illustration: “‘WHY, THERE ISN’T ANY PUNISHMENT SEVERE ENOUGH FOR A CRIME LIKE THAT’”]
As he entered the door of Mrs. Rock’s parlor, where the breakfast table was laid, the girl came swiftly toward him, with the air of having turned from watching for him at the window. “Well, what do you think of me?” she demanded as soon as she had got over Mrs. Rock’s excuses for having her receive him. He had of course to repeat, “What do I think of you?” but he knew perfectly what she meant.
She disdained to help him pretend that he did not know. “It was I who told that horrible woman about your experience at St. Johnswort. I didn’t dream that she was an interviewer, but that doesn’t excuse me, and I am willing to take any punishment for my--I don’t know what to call it--mischief.”
She was so intensely ready, so magnificently prepared for the stake, if that should be her sentence, that Hewson could not help laughing. “Why there isn’t any punishment severe enough for a crime like that,” he began, but she would not allow him to trifle with the matter.
“Oh, I didn’t think you would be so uncandid! The instant I read that interview I made Mrs. Rock get ready to come. And we started the first steamer. It seemed to me that I could not eat or sleep, till I had seen you and told you what I had done and taken the consequences. And now do you think it right to turn it off as a joke?”
“I don’t wish to make a joke of it,” said Hewson, gravely, in compliance with her mood. “But I don’t understand, quite, how you could have got the story over there in time for you--”
“It was cabled to their London edition--that’s what it said in the paper; and by this time they must have it in Australia,” said Miss Hernshaw, with unrelieved severity.
“Oh!” said Hewson, giving himself time to realize that he was the psychical hero of two hemispheres. “Well,” he resumed “what do you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know what I expect. I expected you to say something without my prompting you. You know that it was outrageous for me to talk about your apparition without your leave, and to be the means of its getting into the newspapers.”
“I’m not sure you were the means. I have told the story a hundred times, myself.”
“But that doesn’t excuse me. You knew the kind of people to tell it to, and I didn’t.”