Part 33 (1/2)

”Is that paid woman still here?”

”Oh, no; she's gone.” Flora looked at him warningly. But Mrs. Herrick had caught his tone. ”Why shouldn't she be?” she demanded with delicate asperity.

Kerr had dropped his monocle. ”Because, in common decency, she couldn't. She sold Cressy to me for a good round sum.”

Flora and Mrs. Herrick exchanged a look of horror.

”I'd suspected him,” said Kerr. ”I knew where I'd seen him, but I couldn't be sure of his ident.i.ty till she showed me the picture.”

”What picture?” cried Flora.

”The picture Buller mentioned at the club that night: Farrell Wand, boarding the _Loch Ettive_. Don't you remember?” He spoke gently, as if afraid that a hasty phrase in such connection might do her harm. Now, when he saw how white she looked, he steadied her with his arm. ”We won't talk of this business any more,” he said.

”But I must talk of it,” Flora insisted tremblingly. ”I don't even know what you are.”

For the first time he showed apologetic. He looked from one to the other with a sort of helpless simplicity.

”Why, I'm Chatworth--I'm Crew; I'm the chap that owns the confounded thing!”

To see him stand there, announced in that name, gave the tragic farce its last touch. Flora had an instant of panic when flight seemed the solution. It took all her courage to keep her there, facing him, watching, as if from afar off, Mrs. Herrick's acknowledgment of the informal introduction.

”I came here, quietly,” he was saying, ”so as to get at it without making a row. Only Purdie, good man! knew--and he's been wondering all along why I've held so heavy a hand on him. We'll have to lunch with them again, eh?” He turned and looked at Flora. ”And make all those explanations necessitated by this lady's wonderful sense of honor!”

It was here, somewhere in the neighborhood of this sentence of doubtful meaning, that Mrs. Herrick left them. In looking back, Flora could never recall the exact moment of the departure. But when she raised her eyes from the gra.s.s where they had been fixed for what seemed to her eternity she found only Kerr--no, Chatworth--standing there, looking at her with a grave face.

”Eh?” he said, ”and what about that honor of yours? What shall we say about it, now that the sapphire's gone and no longer in our way?”

She was breathing quick to keep from crying. ”I told you that day at the restaurant.”

”Yes, yes; you told me why you kept the sapphire from me, but”--he hung fire, then fetched it out with an effort--”why did you take it in the first place?”

She looked at him in clear astonishment. ”I didn't know what it was.”

”You didn't!”

It seemed to Flora the whole situation was turning exactly inside out.

The light that was breaking upon her was more than she could bear. ”Oh,”

she wailed, ”you couldn't have thought I meant to take it!”

”Then if you didn't,” he burst out, ”why, when I told you what it was, didn't you give it to me?”

The cruel comic muse, who makes our serious suffering ridiculous, had drawn aside the last curtain. Flora felt the laughter rising in her throat, the tears in her eyes.

”You guessed who I was,” he insisted, advancing, ”at least what I represented.”

She hid her face in her hands, and her voice dropped, tiny, into the stillness.

”I guessed you were Farrell Wand.”