Part 31 (1/2)
While this trial and verdict, swift as a lightning flash, was going on, Suffield had been bustling about the roo, ostentatious tactlessness of a not very clever man under aard circumstances, who has more than half lost his head; under cover of which bustle Mona slipped away and was gone, but ere vanishi+ng she left behind a whisper:
”Soon At the s”
”Hallo, Musgrave! I thought Grace was here,” cried Suffield, turning
”Have a glass of grog after your ride, eh?”
”No thanks”
”What? Did you say you wouldn't? By the way, you haven't off-saddled,”
gli in front of the _stoep_
”I' to off-saddle,” said Roden ”I don't think I can stay very long”
Suffield hardly knehat to answer, so he fired off volleys of coed into thehim, felt moved to pity and conteratuitous an ass of himself, contempt for one whose ”friendshi+p” thus collapsed at the first knock, and that knock an outside one
”If you don't mind, Suffield, I rather want to have a word or tith Miss Ridsdale,” he said at last ”I think I saw her strolling in the direction of the s”
”Certainly, certainly; you're sure to find her there,” assented Suffield effusively ”When you co”
Roden did not hurry as he took his way along that well-known path His gait to the superficial observer was that of a bored lounger, strolling to kill tilimpse of a white dress beneath the leafy canopy in front, so far fro his pace, he deliberately halted, and affected to pick up and examine a leaf or a pebble which lay in the path And as he did so he began softly to hu were:
”'Twas here we last parted, 'twas here we first met”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
”DEAD SEPARATE SOULS”
She turned as he overtook her For a moment they thus stood face to face Then he spoke
”I have coood-bye?” echoed Mona, dully, staring at hi in her sleep
”Yes There is a gulf between us now such as can never be bridged, never It is not good that you should even so much as speak with a murderer A murderer, I repeat”
The faces of both hite as death The fraid andeach other beneath the s--there, where they had firstlove had been interchanged, there, where those long, long kisses had staain--to part
”Roden, say it was not true!” she gasped at last ”You were acquitted at the trial It is not true; it cannot be true! Say it is not; say it is not!”
”But, what if it is?”
The words forced the of a snarl His lips seelowed like those of a cornered wild beast, as he watched her troubled face
”But it is not! No, you could never have done such a thing--you! You could never have been a cold-blooded ht murderer, and robber No, Roden, I will not believe it!”