Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/130

 "What has happened?"

Burlingham briefly recounted the adventure. If he expected a storm of reproaches from Betty his expectations did not materialize. Instead, she was all silence and tenderness because, somehow, she got farther below the surface of the affair than her husband. She was not impervious to romance, especially romance of this rather wild and unusual sort. She intuitively adjusted herself to Armitage's point of view.

"I'll run down to Atlantic City," said Armitage as they led him to one of the guest-rooms. "I know how to handle wounds. I've been mauled more than once by the big cats. Am I a fool, Betty?"

"Of a kind, but not Bob's kind."

"Sorry to cause you all this trouble, but I had to do it my way. I couldn't make Durston's grille with this ankle. You see, I couldn't keep it out of my head what would happen if she found out that my home had not been sold legally, and her father five thousand miles away. She might have run away to find him."

"On the contrary," declared Burlingham, "she would have written him and brought