After the first shock, the widow regarded the girl's struggles without apprehension. Lafe contrived to drag Paula from the room. In the kitchen, her access of rage evaporated swiftly, and she sobbed, her face buried in her arms against the wall. Johnson returned, panting. "Now," Mrs. MacFarlane said steadily, "I want to know what this means." This was natural enough, and Lafe had been thinking faster than he had ever thought in his life. He began an elaborate dissertation on standards along the Border--how different they were to those back east. It was in his mind to persuade the widow that men were apt to depart from the charted paths when removed from the compelling force of an established moral sentiment. That would give him a chance to lead up to Hughie's backsliding by easy stages. Such was his plan. It might have worked smoothly with any other woman, or done by a man of readier wit. But as he looked into Mrs. MacFarlane's face, the affair assumed a different aspect to Lafe. He could not tear down the image of Hughie she had builded and kneeled to during eleven years. There came a tremor in his voice and his speech trailed off into weak incoherencies. He paused, braced himself and started again. "That's better," said Mrs. MacFarlane, very white, and deadly quiet. "That sounds more manly." Once squared away to his task, Johnson did it well. He showed an amazing aptitude for lying. Looking the outraged widow straight in the eye, he lied--lied gloriously--so that, as she heard him, Mrs. MacFarlane gradually shrank back. She appeared to expand and grow taller in her contempt--to Lafe she seemed to fill the room--but when he deftly added a picturesque touch about Paula deluding herself with the suspicion that Mrs. MacFarlane and himself were much too friendly--he told her this with a savage zest--the widow exclaimed, "The very idea! Oh, the creature!" "And you were Hughie's friend?" she remarked when he had ended. Of course, that was the monstrous side of this affair. "Well, you see, ma'am, him and me--" "And Hetty Ferrier!" Now, Lafe had forgotten Hetty in all this. Had Mrs. MacFarlane been a wiser woman, she might have read a different story from his eyes in that instant. "It's my duty to tell her, Mr. Johnson," Mrs. MacFarlane went on, sustained by that sense of moral obligation which overtakes us all in dealing with our friends' private affairs. "It ain't right, ma'am," said Lafe. "It ain't proper that a girl should hear such things." "Ho, indeed!" the widow sniffed. "It isn't, hey? We'll see about that. I suppose Hetty's a baby? And let a sweet girl like her marry a man like you?" "You aim to tell her, Miz MacFarlane?" "I certainly shall." "Wait. Hold on a minute," he begged.