Part 30 (1/2)

”You are my good angel!” he exclaimed. ”Thank Heaven, I won't have to take your money now.”

”All that's mine is yours,” I said.

”It is _you_ I want for mine,” he answered. ”When am I to have you?

Don't keep me waiting long, my darling. I'm nothing without you.”

”I don't want to keep you waiting,” I told him. And indeed I longed to be his wife--his, in spite of G.o.densky; his, till death us should part.

He took me in his arms, and then, when I had promised to marry him as soon as a marriage could be arranged, our talk drifted back to the morning, and the note I had written, telling him that a pretty American girl had found the diamonds.

”She's engaged to marry Ivor Dundas, an old friend of mine--the poor fellow so stupidly accused of murder,” I explained. ”But of course he is innocent. Of course he'll be discharged without a blot upon his name.

They're tremendously in love with each other, almost as much as you and I!”

”You didn't tell me about the love affair in your note,” said Raoul.

”You spoke only of the girl, and the coincidence of her driving past your house, after I went in.”

”There wasn't time for more in that famous communication!” I laughed.

Raoul echoed me. ”It came rather too near being famous, by the way,” he said. ”Just after I had found it in the safe--where you would put it, you witch!--a man came in with an order from the President to copy a clause in a new treaty which is kept there.”

”What treaty?” I asked, with a leap of the heart.