Part 24 (2/2)

”Why, yes,” she said, and her face was all wonder and all concern.

”You hurt me--no, not your hands, but your distrust.”

CHAPTER XVI

AN UNSATISFACTORY EXPLANATION

We went into the house, but no farther than the hall. For the moment we were come there she placed herself in front of me. I remember that the door of the house was never shut, and through the opening I could see a shoulder of the hill and the stars above it, and hear the long roar of the waves upon the beach.

”We are good friends, I hope, you and I,” she said. ”Plain speech is the privilege of such friends.h.i.+p. Speak, then, as though you were speaking to a man. Wherein have I not been frank with you?”

There must be, I thought, some explanation which would free her from all suspicion of deceit. Else, how could she speak with so earnest a tongue or look with eyes so steady?

”As man to man, then,” I answered, ”I am grieved I was not told that Cullen Mayle had come secretly to Tresco and had thence escaped.”

”Cullen!” she said, in a wondering voice. ”He was on Tresco! Where?”

I constrained myself to answer patiently.

”In the Abbey grounds, on St. Helen's Island, and--” I paused, thinking, nay hoping, that even at this eleventh hour she would speak, she would explain. But she kept silence, nor did her eyes ever waver from my face.

--”And,” I continued, ”on Castle Down.”

”There!” she exclaimed, and added, thoughtfully, ”Yes, there he would be safe. But when was Cullen upon Tresco? When?”

So the deception was to be kept up.

”On the night,” I answered, ”when I first came to Merchant's Point.”

She looked at me for a little without a word, and I could imagine that it was difficult for her to hit upon an opportune rejoinder. There was one question, however, which might defer her acknowledgments of her concealments, and, to be sure, she asked it:

”How do you know that?” and before I could answer, she added another, which astonished me by its a.s.surance. ”When did you find out?”

I told her, I trust with patience, of the key and the various steps by which I had found out. ”And as to when,” I said, ”it was this afternoon.”

At that she gave a startled cry, and held out a trembling hand towards me.

”Had you known,” she cried, ”had you known only yesterday that Cullen had come and had safely got him back, you would have been spared all you went through last night!”

”What I went through last night!” I exclaimed, pa.s.sionately. ”Oh, that is of small account to me, and I beg you not to suffer it to trouble your peace. But--I do not say had I known yesterday, I say had I been _told_ yesterday--I should have been spared a very bitter disappointment.”

”I do not understand,” she said, and again she put out her hand towards me and drew it in and stretched it out again with an appearance of distress to which even at that moment I felt myself softening. However, I took no heed of the hand. ”In some way you blame me, but I do not understand.”

”You would, perhaps, find it easier to understand if you were at the pains to remember that on the night I landed upon Tresco, I came over Castle Down and past the shed to Merchant's Point.”

”Well?” and she spoke with more coldness, as though her pride made her stubborn in defiance. No doubt she was unaware that I was close to her that night. It remained for me to reveal that, and G.o.d knows I did it with no sense of triumph, but only a great sadness.

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