Part 10 (1/2)

”There is no connection between the two--in your mind?” she asked. She was looking away from him, and he could not see her face. But the question was eager, almost pathetically eager.

”a.s.suredly not,” he denied promptly. ”Otherwise----”

”Otherwise you wouldn't be here to-night as my father's guest, you would say. But others are not as charitable. Mr. Macpherson was one of them.

He charged all the trouble to us, though he could prove nothing. He said that if all the circ.u.mstances were made public--” She faced him quickly, and he saw that the beautiful eyes were full of trouble. ”Can't you see what would happen--what is likely to happen if Mr. Wingfield sees fit to make literary material out of all these mysteries?”

The Kentuckian nodded. ”The unthinking, newspaper-reading public would probably make one morsel of the accidents and your father's known antagonism to the company. But Wingfield would be something less than a man and a lover if he could bring himself to the point of making literary capital out of anything that might remotely involve you or your father.”

She shook her head doubtfully.

”You don't understand the artistic temperament. It's a pa.s.sion. I once heard Mr. Wingfield say that a true artist would make copy out of his grandmother.”

Ballard scowled. It was quite credible that the Lester Wingfields were lost to all sense of the common decencies, but that Elsa Craigmiles should be in love with the sheik of the caddish tribe was quite beyond belief.

”I'll choke him off for you,” he said; and his tone took its colour from the contemptuous under-thought. ”But I'm afraid I've already made a mess of it. To tell the truth, I suggested to Miss Van Bryck at dinner that our camp might be a good hunting-ground for Wingfield.”

”_You said that to Dosia?_” There was something like suppressed horror in the low-spoken query.

”Not knowing any better, I did. She was speaking of Wingfield, and of the literary barrenness of house-parties in general. I mentioned the camp as an alternative--told her to bring him down, and I'd--Good heavens! what have I done?”

Even in the softened light of the electric globes he saw that her face had become a pallid mask of terror; that she was swaying in the hammock.

He was beside her instantly; and when she hid her face in her hands, his arm went about her for her comforting--this, though Wingfield was chatting amiably with Mrs. Van Bryck no more than three chairs away.

”Don't!” he begged. ”I'll get out of it some way--lie out of it, fight out of it, if needful. I didn't know it meant anything to you. If I had--Elsa, dear, I love you; you've known it from the first. You can make believe with other men as you please, but in the end I shall claim you. Now tell me what it is that you want me to do.”

Impulsively she caught at the caressing hand on her shoulder, kissed it, and pushed him away with resolute strength.

”You must never forget yourself again, dear friend--or make me forget,”

she said steadily. ”And you must help me as you can. There is trouble--deeper trouble than you know or suspect. I tried to keep you out of it--away from it; and now you are here in Arcadia, to make it worse, infinitely worse. You have seen me laugh and talk with the others, playing the part of the woman you know. Yet there is never a waking moment when the burden of anxiety is lifted.”

He mistook her meaning.

”You needn't be anxious about Wingfield's material hunt,” he interposed.

”If Miss Dosia takes him to the camp, I'll see to it that he doesn't hear any of the ghost stories.”

”That is only one of the anxieties,” she went on hurriedly. ”The greatest of them is--for you.”

”For me? Because----”

”Because your way to Arcadia lay over three graves. That means nothing to you--does it also mean nothing that your life was imperilled within an hour of your arrival at your camp?”

He drew the big chair nearer to the hammock and sat down again.

”Now you are letting Bromley's imagination run away with yours. That rock came from our quarry. There was a night gang getting out stone for the dam.”

She laid her hand softly on his knee.

”Do you want to know how much I trust you? That stone was thrown by a man who was standing upon the high bluff back of your headquarters. He thought you were alone in the office, and he meant to kill you. Don't ask me who it was, or how I know--I _do_ know.”

Ballard started involuntarily. It was not in human nature to take such an announcement calmly.