Part 7 (2/2)

”Oh!” she said. And again, ”Oh, is that all!” She was disappointed. ”I don't see why you and the major should have been so mysterious about that.”

”You don't, eh? Suppose you had taken the ring--wouldn't it make a difference to you if you knew twenty-four hours ahead that a reward of twenty thousand dollars would be published? Wouldn't you expect every man's hand to be against you at that price? If you had a pal, wouldn't you be afraid he'd sell you up? Wouldn't you be glad of twenty-four hours' start to keep him from turning state's evidence? Well--it's just so that he shan't have the start that the authorities are keeping so almighty dark about the reward. They want to spring it on him.”

Flora leaned forward with knitted brows. ”Yes, I can see that, but still, just among ourselves, this morning--”

Harry smiled. ”You've lost sight of the fact that it is just among ourselves the thing has happened.”

”Oh, oh! Now you're ridiculous!”

”I might be, if the thing had happened anywhere but in this town; but think a moment. How much do we know of the people we meet, where they were, and who they were, before they came here? There's a case in point.

It was not quite 'among ourselves' this morning.”

”Harry, how horrid of you!” She was on the point of declaring that she knew Kerr very well indeed; but she remembered this might not be the thing to say to Harry.

”My dear girl, I'm not saying anything against him. I only remarked that we did not know him.”

”Don't _you_, Harry?”

He gave her a quick look. ”Why, what put that into your head?”

”I--I don't know. I thought you looked at him very hard last night in the picture gallery. And afterward, at supper, don't you remember, you did not want me to mention your connection with something or other he was talking about?”

”Something or other he was talking about?” Harry inquired with a frowning smile.

”I think it was about that Emba.s.sy ball--”

”_I_ didn't want you to mention the Emba.s.sy ball?” he repeated, and now he was only smiling. ”My dear child, surely you are dreaming.”

She looked at him with the bewildered feeling that he was flatly contradicting himself. And yet she could remember he had not shaken his head at her. He had only nodded. Could it be that her cherished imagination had played her a trick at last? But the next moment it occurred to her that somehow she had been led away from her first question.

”Then _have_ you seen him, Harry?” she insisted.

”No!” He jerked it out so sharply that it startled her, but she stuck to her subject.

”And you wouldn't have minded my telling him you had been at that ball?”

There was a pause while Harry looked at the fire. Then--”Look here,” he burst out, ”did he ask you about it?”

”Oh, no,” she protested. ”I only just happened to wonder.”

He stared at her as if he would have liked to shake her. But then he rose from his frowning att.i.tude before the fire, came over to her, sat on the arm of her chair, and, with the tip of one finger under her chin, lifted her face; but she did not lift her eyes. She heard only his voice, very low, with a caressing note that she hardly knew as Harry's.

”It isn't that I care _what_ you say to him. The fact is, Flora, I suppose I was a little jealous, but I naturally don't like the suggestion that you would discuss me with a stranger.”

She knew herself properly reproved, and she reproached herself, not for what she had actually said to Kerr of Harry--that had been trivial enough--but for that wayward impulse she had to confide in this clear-eyed, whimsical stranger, as it had never occurred to her to confide in Harry.

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