The young girl laughed.  “Why not that one too, while you’re about it?  See what she’ll say.”

“I shall tell her,” continued Clarence calmly, “only what you yourself have made it necessary for me to tell her to save you from folly and disgrace, and only enough to spare her the mortification of hearing it first from her own servants.”

“Hearing what from her own servants?  What do you mean?  How dare you?” demanded the young girl sharply.

She was quite real in her anxiety now, although her attitude of virtuous indignation struck him as being like all her emotional expression, namely, acting.

“I mean that the servants know of your correspondence with Mrs. McClosky, and that she claims to be your aunt,” returned Clarence.  “They know that you confided to Pepita.  They believe that either Mrs. McClosky or you have seen”—­

He had stopped suddenly.  He was about to say that the servants (particularly Incarnacion) knew that Pedro had boasted of having met Susy, when, for the first time, the tremendous significance of what he had hitherto considered as merely an idle falsehood flashed upon him.

“Seen whom?” repeated Susy in a higher voice, impatiently stamping her foot.

Clarence looked at her, and in her excited, questioning face saw a confirmation of his still half-formed suspicions.  In his own abrupt pause and knitted eyebrows she must have read his thoughts also.  Their eyes met.  Her violet pupils dilated, trembled, and then quickly shifted as she suddenly stiffened into an attitude of scornful indifference, almost grotesque in its unreality.  His eyes slowly turned to the window, the door, the candles on the table and the chair before it, and then came back to her face again.  Then he drew a deep breath.

“I give no heed to the idle gossip of servants, Susy,” he said slowly.  “I have no belief that you have ever contemplated anything worse than an act of girlish folly, or the gratification of a passing caprice.  Neither do I want to appeal to you or frighten you, but I must tell you now, that I know certain facts that might make such a simple act of folly monstrous, inconceivable in you, and almost accessory to a crime!  I can tell you no more.  But so satisfied am I of such a possibility, that I shall not scruple to take any means—­the strongest—­to prevent even the remotest chance of it.  Your aunt has been looking for you; you had better go to her now.  I will close the room and lock the door.  Meantime, I should advise you not to sit so near an open window with a candle at night in this locality.  Even if it might not be dangerous for you, it might be fatal to the foolish creatures it might attract.”

He took the key from the door as he held it open for her to pass out.  She uttered a shrill little laugh, like a nervous, mischievous child, and, slipping out of her previous artificial attitude as if it had been a mantle, ran out of the room.