Part 7 (2/2)

CHAPTER IV

UNSPOKEN ANTAGONISM

Garrison crossed the room with an active stride and closed the door firmly.

Dorothy was pale when he turned. She, too, was standing.

”You can see that I've got to be posted a little,” he said quietly.

”To err has not ceased to be human.”

”You have made no mistakes,” said Dorothy in a voice barely above a whisper. ”I didn't expect them. When I found they had come I hardly knew what to do. And when they declared I had no husband I had to request you to come.”

”Something of the sort was my conclusion,” Garrison told her. ”I have blundered along with fact and fiction as best I might, but what am I supposed to have done that excites them both to insult me?”

Dorothy seemed afraid that the very walls might hear and betray her secret.

”Your supposed marriage to me is sufficient,” she answered in the lowest of undertones. ”You must have guessed that they feel themselves cheated out of this house and other property left in a relative's will.”

”Cheated by your marriage?” said Garrison.

She nodded, watching to see if a look of distrust might appear in the gaze he bent upon her.

”I wouldn't dare attempt to inform you properly or adequately to-night, with my uncle in the house,” she said. ”But please don't believe I've done anything wrong--and don't desert me now.”

She had hardly intended to appeal to him so helplessly, but somehow she had been so glad to lean upon his strength, since his meeting with her relatives, that the impulse was not to be resisted. Moreover she felt, in some strange working of the mind, that she had come to know him as well within the past half-hour as she had ever known anyone in all her life. Her trust had gone forth of its own volition, together with her grat.i.tude and admiration, for the way he had taken up her cause.

”I left the matter entirely with you this afternoon,” he said. ”I only wish to know so much as you yourself deem essential. I feel this man is vindictive, cowardly, and crafty. Are you sure you are safe where he is?”

”Oh, yes, I'm quite safe, even if it is unpleasant,” she told him, grateful for his evident concern. ”If need be, the caretaker would fight a pack of wolves in my defense.”

”This will?” asked Garrison. ”When is it going to be settled--when does it come to probate?”

”I don't quite know.”

”When is your real husband coming?” he inquired, more for her own protection than his own.

She had not admitted, in the afternoon, that she had a husband. She colored now as she tried to meet his gaze.

”Did I tell you there was such a person?”

”No,” said Garrison, ”you did not. I thought---- Perhaps that's one of the many things I am not obliged to know.”

”Perhaps.” She hesitated a moment, adding: ”If you'd rather not go on----”

She lowered her eyes. He felt a thrill that he could not a.n.a.lyze, it lay so close to jealousy and hope. And whatever it was, he knew it was out of the bargain, and not in the least his right.

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