Part 60

I looked at him steadily.

"You know I haven't," I said gently.

That took some of the starch out of him, but he eyed me suspiciously.

"Why don't you ask me where I got the coat, Bishop Van Wagenen?" I said, leaning over to him.

He started. I suppose he'd just that moment remembered my leaving it behind that day at Mrs. Ramsay's.

"Lord bless me!" he cried anxiously. "You haven't--you haven't again--"

"No, I haven't." Ah, Maggie, dear, it was worth a lot to me to be able to say that "no" to him. "It was given to me. Guess who gave it to me."

He shook his head.

"My husband!"

Maggie Monahan, he didn't even blink. Perhaps in the Bishop's set husbands are not uncommon, or very likely they don't know what a husband like Fred Obermuller means.

"I congratulate you, my child, or--or did it--were you--"

"Why, I'd never seen Fred Obermuller then," I cried. "Can't you tell a difference, Bishop?" I pleaded. "Don't I look like a--an imposing married woman now? Don't I seem a bit--oh, just a bit nicer?"

His eyes twinkled as he bent to look more closely at me.

"You look--you look, my little girl, exactly like the pretty, big-eyed, wheedling-voiced child I wished to have for my own daughter."

I caught his hand in both of mine.

"Now, that's like my own, own Bishop!" I cried. Mag--Mag, he was blushing like a boy, a prim, rather scared little school-boy that somehow, yet--oh, I knew he must feel kindly to me! I felt so fond of him.

"You see, Bishop Van Wagenen," I began softly, "I never had a father and--"

"Bless me! But you told me that day you had mistaken me for--for him."

The baby! I had forgotten what that old Edward told me--that this trusting soul actually still believed all I'd told him. What was I to do? I tell you, Mag, it's no light thing to get accustomed to telling the truth. You never know where it'll lead you. Here was I--just a clever little lie or two and the dear old Bishop would be happy and contented again. But no; that fatal habit that I've acquired of telling the truth to Fred and you mastered me--and I fell.

"You know, Bishop," I said, shutting my eyes and speaking fast to get it over--as I imagine you must, Mag, when you confess to Father Phelan--"that was all a--a little farce-comedy--the whole business--all of it--every last word of it!"

"A comedy!"

I opened my eyes to laugh at him; he was so bewildered.

"I mean a--a fib; in fact, many of them. I--I was just--it was long ago--and I had to make you believe--"

His soft old eyes looked at me unbelieving. "You don't mean to say you deliberately lied!"

Now, that was what I did mean--just what I did mean--but not in that tone of voice.

But what could I do? I just looked at him and nodded.

Oh, Maggie, I felt so little and so nasty! I haven't felt like that since I left the Cruelty. And I'm not nasty, Maggie, and I'm Fred Obermuller's wife, and--

And that put a backbone in me again. Fred Obermuller's wife just won't let anybody think worse of her than she can help--from sheer love and pride in that big, clever husband of hers.