"I will
myself see Mrs. Ogle."
"No, no! The idea! I should have to leave at once. Whatever shall I
do if she turns me away, and won't give me a reference or anything!"
Even in a calmer mood, Julian's excessive delicacy would have
presented an affair of this kind in a grave light to him; at present
he was wholly incapable of distinguishing between true and false, or
of gauging these fears at their true value. The mere fact of the
girl making so great a matter out of what should have been so easy
to explain and have done with, caused an exaggeration of the
difficulty in his own mind. He felt that he ought of course to
justify himself before Mrs. Ogle, and would have been capable of
doing so had only Harriet taken the same sensible view; but her
apparent distress seemed--even to him--so much more like
conscious guilt than troubled innocence, that such a task would cost
him the acutest suffering. For nearly an hour he argued with her,
trying to convince her how impossible it was that the woman who had
surprised them should harbour any injurious suspicions.
"But she knows--" began Harriet, and then stopped, her eyes
falling.
"What does she know?" demanded her cousin in surprise; but could get
no reply to his question.
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