Peewee stood up, shrinking anxiously.
"You don't understand. I'm not thinking about Walter or Marion now. I'm thinking about Edith." This was Beman.
"Edith! Great heavens! You don't suppose—"
There was silence in the library; for the moment nothing more followed this astonished exclamation, and Peewee was no longer listening to conversation which had already given him more than he could easily understand. The chief fact of this was clear: Helen Lampert had been merely "nuts" or had been lying. It followed that the man who, on the evidence of what she had told him, had admitted his parentage of Peewee was not his father.
He perceived, as he comprehended this, the extent of the mistake resulting from what the woman had said. It had made Walter Markyn give the Lamperts money to keep them quiet about Peewee; it had made Mrs. Markyn unhappy and anxious; it had caused anxiety to Jeffrey Markyn and to Beman. That fierce old man—who, Peewee had learned, took revenge
