"Quite so," Ellerdine said quickly; "just a short, straight, simple tale, ready for any emergency."
"Dearest Peggy, none at all," Lady Attwill said, with a note of anxious affection in her voice.
"I see. I understand. But don't you think the tale will need a lot of corroboration?"
"Oh!" Peggy said, and there was a world of meaning in the exclamation.
"You see," Lord Ellerdine went on anxiously--"you see, it's all right, Peggy. We have left nothing to chance."
Lady Attwill nodded. "Nothing at all," she said, echoing her friend.
Peggy looked at them each in turn. Her sweet and youthful face bore little trace of what she had gone through the night before; and though her head was throbbing and her nerves were all jangling and raw, her freshness and purity of countenance remained absolutely unimpaired. Beside her Alice Attwill suddenly seemed to have grown old.
She looked at them each in turn with grave contemplation--lastly at Collingwood. "And what do you think about it, Colling?" she asked at length. "Don't you think that we are a precious set of fools? No--that's unkind of me. Not you, Alice. Not you, Dicky. I am the precious fool. Fool! Why, I should have been in cap and bells! A thing to make the whole world laugh. For only the fool will ask for an explanation--the wise, if they ask, will look on the explanation as the better part of the joke. But tell me, Dicky, why is the explanation necessary?"
"Oh! Come, Peggy, come. Confound it!" Lord Ellerdine blundered out. "It _looks_ so deuced bad."
Peggy made a grimace at him. "Candid!" she said. "Now that was frank. 'It _looks_ so deuced bad.' That's it. Looks! But only _looks_. What do you think, Colling? Can't we tell the truth? Is there anything to hide?"
"There," Peggy went on; "there's nothing to hide."
"Oh, we all know that," Lord Ellerdine said hastily.
Peggy's rising temper almost got the better of her. "Then why the explanation--the 'short, straight, simple tale'? Why not the truth?"
She clenched her hands, and an angry light burned in her eyes. "Oh! I'll leave you for a moment. I must go out. This place is stifling! We ought all to be out in the air. We'll grow mouldy in here--plotting. Alice, I'll put on my hat. Colling, you must invent another tale to satisfy Dicky's scruples. Think it over."