"Ah, go on!" And yet she veered back again, with a dash of tears in her blue eyes. "Say, kid, I know all about it. You needn’t try to put anything over on me. I know all about it, and I’m sorry for you. That’s what I want to say. Do you remember how I used to tell you I was your friend, and that Harry Drinkwater was your friend, too? Well, we are—even now. There’s something about you we both—we both kind o’ took to. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It was there when I thought you might be a swell crook; and if I didn’t mind that I don’t mind—this. The only thing I’m thinking is that you’re up against it awful thick; and so I told Dick Stroud that whoever shook you the sad hand of farewell I’d be on the spot as the ministering angel." There were so many points here that I could only seize the one lying, as it were, on top. "So you—you know Dick Stroud?" She had gone on with her work again. "_Know_ him? Well, I should say!" "Have you known him long?" "Known him ever since ... Say, I’ll tell you when it was. It was after we all came back on that ship together, and I was still doing the stenog act for Boydie Averill, before I got Harry back on the job again. Well, one day _that_ guy floated in, towed by little Lulu. He sure is her style for fair, or he used to be before he went to France." "Did—did Mrs. Averill introduce him to you?" "He didn’t wait for that. He introduced himself with a look. I didn’t need a second one before I’d read him like a headline. When I started to go home that evening he was waiting at the corner to take me in a taxi." "Did you let him?" "Sure I let him. It was a ride. When he asked me to dinner at the Blitz I let him do that, too. You saw us. Don’t you remember that nut? that’s what you called him afterward." It came to me, that sleek mass of silver, distinguished and sinister at once. "So that was he!" "That was Dick, sure thing!" "You call him Dick?" "What else would I call him when he wants me to? But that’s giving him away." "Giving whom away?" Vio had come out of her room without our having heard her. In a tea-gown of black and gold she stood before us in an almost terrifying dignity. That is, it was almost terrifying to me, though Lydia was equal to the situation. "Oh, madam, I didn’t know you heard. Mr. Harrowby was just kidding me about Colonel Stroud." "Indeed!" Moving forward with the air of an astonished queen, Vio seated herself in the armchair. "But why should Mr. Harrowby be—what was the word?—kidding you about anything?" "Oh, we’re old friends. Ain’t we?" She turned to me for corroboration. "Very good old friends," I said, with some warmth. "Really! And you never told me." "Madam never asked me. She never asked me if I knew Colonel Stroud, either. How could I tell that she wanted to know?" "Oh, but I don’t want to know. I’m only interested—" she looked toward me—"that you and—and this young lady should be so—so intimate."