Part 11 (1/2)

”It's about James Challoner--my father?” asked Cynthia, and Robert Daventry shut his eyes with a look of great distress upon his face.

”How long have you known?” he asked.

”From the night when he came to the estancia,” she answered. And she told how she had slipped into the smoking-room and how, huddled in the great chair, she had heard all that James Challoner proposed for her.

The shadow deepened upon Daventry's face as he listened, and when she had ended he asked with deep regret:

”Why didn't you tell us this, Cynthia?”

”Because, just outside the smoking-room door in the hall, you both decided not to tell me--not to breathe a word of--of my father's visit. You thought the knowledge would trouble and frighten me. You thought it would hurt. Well, I was as certain that you would be greatly distressed to know that already I had the knowledge. So I held my tongue.”

”And it did trouble you?”

”Yes.”

”A great deal?”

”Yes,” Cynthia admitted. ”I was frightened. I did not know what power he might have. I knew you had fled from him for my sake.”

”And since you have been here--during these three years--you have still been troubled, still frightened lest he should come and claim you with the law at his side?”

Though the old man could hardly speak above a whisper, he was strangely insistent in his questioning. The words came unevenly, with breaks between, and now and then a weak gasp for breath. Cynthia replied quite simply:

”Yes, here, too, I have thought that he might come. I used to be frightened at night. I used to hear him in the house.”

And with every word she spoke the compunction and distress deepened in Daventry's mind.

”What a pity!” he said. ”Neither of us guessed, not even Joan, who was quicker than I to notice things. And we thought we knew all about you, Cynthia!” A faint smile lit up his face. ”How little, after all, we did know! For we could have spared you all this trouble. Read.” And opening his hand he let her take from it the newspaper slip. She uttered a cry as she read the first lines.

”It's true,” said Daventry, from the bed.

Cynthia carried the cutting over to the window and read by the fading light. It gave the account of an inquest held at a small town twenty-five miles up the line from the Daventry estancia on the body of an Englishman who had been stabbed to the heart by a Gaucho in a drunken quarrel at a tavern. There was a witness who had worked with the Englishman, and could identify him. He called himself James Challoner, and, when he was drunk, he would boast of his family.

Cynthia looked at the date of the paper. It was almost three years old. James Challoner had been killed within a week of his dismissal by Robert Daventry. Cynthia let the slip of paper fall from her fingers, and stood by the window until Robert Daventry called her to his side.

”You held your tongue so as not to distress us,” he whispered. ”We held ours so as not to frighten you. And so because we were careful of your happiness, and you of ours, you have gone through years of anxiety and terror. Needless anxiety! Terror without a cause! I am so sorry. It seems so pitiful. It seems rather grim to me, Cynthia.”

Cynthia answered quietly:

”That's the way things happen.” And when she had spoken, Robert Daventry, with an effort, raised himself upon his elbow and peered into her face.

”You oughtn't to be able to say that, Cynthia,” he said remorsefully.

”You oughtn't to be able to think it. It's not the proper philosophy for twenty. I am afraid, my dear, that trouble has gone deep.” He fell back and in a moment a little whimsical smile flickered upon his face.

”I don't think I'll tell Joan about this,” he said. ”She wouldn't like it. She wouldn't forgive herself for not having noticed that you were troubled.”

”After all, it was my fault,” said Cynthia. ”For I hid in the room.

However, it's all over now.”